Eduardo Galeano on Brecht

From Century of the Wind, the third volume of a three volume tome of the history of the Americas, called Memory of Fire.

1942: Hollywood

"Brecht"

Hollywood manufactures films to turn the frightful vigil of humanity, to the point of annihilation, into sweet dreams. Bertolt Brecht, exiled from Hitler's Germany, is employed in this sleeping-pill industry. Founder of a theater that sought to open eyes wide, he earns his living at the United Artists studios, just one more writer who works office hours for Hollywood, competing to produce the biggest daily ration of idiocies.

On one of these days, Brecht buys a little God of Lucky for forty cents in a Chinese store and puts it on his desk. Brecht has been told that the God of Luck licks his lips each time they make him take poison.

Checkpoint 303 Beats Drum for Resistance

Checkpoint 303 composes activist breakbeats and middle-eastern electronica to promote peace, human rights and justice in the middle-east.

Their music is available for free download at http://www.checkpoint303.com or Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/checkpoint303.

Here's a piece the band recently wrote for Common Ground News Service (CGNews) available at: www.commongroundnews.org

Tear down the wall and dance!
06 March 2008

EAST JERUSALEM and LYON, FRANCE — We had nearly finished getting our gear off the stage when someone from the audience came up to congratulate us on our show. After telling us how much he enjoyed the music and video projection, he added, with a slightly troubled look on his face: “…but I have a problem. Isn’t it somehow wrong to dance to music that deals with the Palestinian cause?” He explained that while he found himself dancing to some of the more up-beat songs, he could not help asking himself whether it was okay to dance to the message our music embodies.

We were pleased to hear about his ‘dilemma’. This is precisely what our band, Checkpoint 303, is all about. Instead of telling the audience what to think about the issue of Palestine, which would be a ridiculously naïve attitude, we try to trigger a reflective process in our listeners.

This same question is put to us every now and again. Obviously there’s no universal answer. Every individual has to discover what they consider to be right, that’s the point; it’s ultimately all about the process of figuring it out. But for those who feel guilty grooving to the sound of a serious humanitarian issue, we have one consolation: silly I-love-you-baby lyrics need not be the unique criterion for danceable music.

This said, Checkpoint 303 is not a dance music band. The songs we consider successful are ones that involve the listener in the artistic process, songs in which the listener participates in creating the statement, as opposed to passively consuming a message. This can only be achieved by avoiding music with a ready-to-go, prêt-à-porter, take-away message.


How can this be achieved from a practical point of view? By contrast to other forms of musical activism, we do not rely on lyrics to convey our message. Checkpoint 303’s music is primarily based on field we record throughout the Middle East, and Palestine in particular—covering a large spectrum of predominantly urban sounds: people talking in the old city of Jerusalem, a traffic jam in Ramallah, excerpts of a local Bethlehem radio station, the sound of an identity control at an Israeli checkpoint, the chanting of a demonstration in the west bank, etc. We then transform the audio material into loops, onto which we add electronic beats, riffs and melodies played on oud (oriental lute), keyboard or guitar.


When our ‘sound catchers’, SC Yosh or Cheikh Julio, are on the street with their recording gear, they are not looking for a specific sound to convey a pre-defined impression or statement. The essence of our music is to capture, fragment, and reconstruct the soundtrack of daily life in the occupied Palestinian territories. Yet we don’t restrict our music to only portraying the suffering and hardship of life under occupation. The media is doing a fantastically wrong and biased job of exclusively depicting the negative aspects of life in this tormented region of the world. By contrast, our music includes rhythms of “normal” life, the supposedly insignificant things that never make headlines, but help make possible the very idea of “hope” in Palestine.


Many Palestinian families heroically try, against all odds, to get along with their lives, educate their children, and dream of a better future—one worth living for. There are positive stories to report from Palestine. Our attempt to make music based on objective field recordings in the Middle East is in itself a challenging intellectual exercise. But, at the end of the day, that is precisely what yields the necessary degree of realism and humanity that is the backbone of our music.
Our aim, then, is to blend the aesthetics of electronic music composition with the social, economical, and humanitarian dimensions of reality in Palestine in a way that actively involves the listener in shaping the message. But does this make our work political? Although it may be perceived as such, our creative intentions are not political per se. They are driven by fundamental humanitarian values. It seems to us that the universality of human rights should in theory be both the common ground and the starting point to achieve peace. Additionally, when it comes to the question of whether our art is politically correct or not, the answer is simple: we do not care as long as it is humanly correct. We are artists, not politicians; this allows us the luxury of being able to tell the truth from a humanitarian point of view with no fear of electoral consequences!

Electronic music and audiovisual experimentation are the tools Checkpoint 303 uses to react to both the virtual and physical walls the occupation has created. These walls are also being hacked by the flourishing Palestinian hip-hop and trip-hop scene (e.g. DAM, Ramallah Underground, G-Town, Arapeyat, etc.) but also international artists such as the British graffiti artist Banksy or the American indie songwriter and political activist David Rovics to name but a few.

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This article is part of a special series on Art and Conflict, which surveys the work of art in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and examines the political dimensions of art in general.

Copyright permission is granted for publication.

Checkpoint 303 collaborates with film-makers, musicians, and visual artists from around the globe. Its free tunes from occupied territories are an act of resistance and a celebration of hope.

Checkpoint 303 was invited by Massive Attack to be a support band for three shows in the UK in 2007 and in France in 2008. We are also very much into performing in alternative venues and spaces where the aesthetics and meaning of sound/noise and its link to social activism can be reconsidered and explored...

Over the last two years, the band has performed electronic and live sets in several countries (USA, Australia, Canada, France, Palestine, Tunisia, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Japan, etc.) spreading the word for peace and human rights through a blend of twisted electronica, downtempo, break-beats, oriental riffs and field recordings...

The Korean Reunification

On Monday, I saw a documentary as part of the San Diego Asian Film Festival, called Tiger Spirit.
Korean Canadian filmmaker Min Sook Lee intended her project to focus on the elusive and possibly extinct Korean Tiger, which is an important symbol for the Korean fighting spirit.
During filming however Lee's attention turns to the 56-year-old wall separating the two Koreas and millions of family members.
The heavily guarded DMZ was created in 1953, following the 3-year Korean war that ended in stalemate and armistice between the communist-backed North and U.S.-backed South.
At the time, Koreans assumed reunification would shortly follow.
Separation then was 'merely' geographical. It has over the years become a wide cultural expanse. South Korea has opened to capitalism while North Korea of course has grown more isolated.
During the film, we meet former North Koreans who defected south and find themselves strangers adrift in a foreign country. They must attend indoctrination classes to repatriate. They rely on each other. They start families. Get jobs. But when they close their eyes, they still dream of the Korea they know in the North. They can never return.
However, the film culminates with a 3-day reunification event between family members separated during the war. Those who fled to the South are now well into their 70s, 80s and 90s. They are picked by a lottery to attend. Many who have applied discover that their siblings and cousins have died off in the five decades.
The reunions are tightly controlled and observed. Lee doesn't tell us exactly who is observing. We know the North Koreans are under watch, but we must also assume the South Korean government has its own interests in the event. Participants are allowed only two hours of privacy in a hotel room during one of the days.
Those who are selected see old men and women looking back at them. They try to communicate through the barriers of time and dementia. As the last meeting ends, the North Koreans board buses to return them to Pyongyang. Their old family members waving them off can be heard crying and breaking down as they see their siblings probably for the last time.
It's a heartbreaking tale created by one of the most enduring walls of the last half century.
-Ned

Gods and Little Girls

Gods and Little Girls

What is worse? To die silently, as life seeps from your wrinkles or to walk panic stricken through the streets worried about the meal for your little chicks? From one side of the river the other looks so enticing. You have a meal in front of you now. Life is good isn't it little chicken? And I can stroke your hair and help you braid it. I can be here with you. Before, I worked while servants prepared your meal on a silver platter and you ate in solitude. Is that better?

I like that you're here.

I do too. Tonight I like it. Tomorrow, I will wake up gaunt of worry before the sun rises and roam the streets in fear that there will be no food for you. I will beg in doorways for work and scour the sea floor for crabs with the net of my hands. And I will not rest until there is enough to fatten you like dough.

And then we can be together?

Yes, then we can be together again. Beneath the stars, and I can share with you more secrets of life.

What is the biggest secret?

The biggest secret is that comfort is meaningless. Comfort is like trying to hold water in your hands. People work their lives to keep the water from leaking through their fingers. No matter how much money they make, or how much comfort they have, they always find more worries. Everywhere they turn, there will be a worry waiting, like a skull smiling at them. The great masters knew this and painted it on canvases that once donned our foyer walls. But some ignore this secret, and they will ruin themselves and the rest of us trying to be comfortable. But no matter how much they toss and turn, their beds will never feel right. They may live longer than I, even though I am old, and they may look young with balms, but they are dying inside as the air seeps from them.

Do they love?

You want to talk of love little chick? Everybody should love. Let me tell you a story about love. Your grandpapa and I loved across a thousand years. I think we loved each other before we were born. When our love was already written, and welcomed us to it. That is how old love is. Yes, chicken everybody should love. When we are born, angels wait for us to open our eyes and drape love around us like a velvet robe. And they are happy because love wants nothing more than to share itself.

Like me and you? Like when we nuzzle each other? Like when you wrap your shawl around me at night?

Yes chicken. Like that. Are you finished eating? You go ahead and finish. I want you fat. I am old, and have already had my fill. Your grandmother needs just a few morsels, nothing more than a mouthful. Let me tell you more about love. When you were born, I heard angels. They were on either side of my ears, and they whispered over me to each other about your beautiful brown eyes. I said, I know, she has her mother’s eyes. And they said, her smile, look at the dimples her smile makes. And I said, yes, she has her mother's dimples. They said, it’s as if her eyes and mouth smile at once. And I whispered to you, because I didn't want to seem like I was eavesdropping, the world is smiling with you.

Was mama beautiful?

She was beautiful. A mother always thinks her children are beautiful. But I have ears too. I heard them say as they walked on the path outside our home that she was the most beautiful girl in the whole valley. Some of the old superstitious ones said she was too beautiful. They came and said a prayer at our doorstep to keep out jealous spirits. You know, some people believe that spirits are easily tempted. Beautiful girls, they say, cause trouble in the heavens between gods. Jealous spirits like that are very dangerous. Some say they will put a scar across a beautiful girl's face to make her ugly, or cast them with disease or lure them into the water and drown them. Then they will try to take the form of the beautiful ones. But they cannot take human form and become even angrier and more jealous. That's why old superstitious women say prayers and light votive candles at the church. They say beautiful girls make spirits even more dangerous which is hard on the village. Don't look so frightened chicken. Those are just old tales. But that's part of life and you should know this.

Is that what happened to mama? Was she so beautiful that a jealous spirit hurt her?

No. Your mama died while you were being born. Those are just stories. The only spirits I believe in are good ones: angels who watch over all of us. I told your mama just after you were born that I would look after you. I told her that you would never have to worry. I would make sure you had a full belly, and the rain would stay off your head and the ground would not cut your feet because you would always have a pair of shoes. I told her I would also teach you about life, and teach you how to live a good, rich life that would be meaningful. And when you fell in love and married, that's when I would leave this life, and not a moment before.

Will jealous spirits hurt me too?

No, that's enough talk of that. You are beautiful like your mother. There are no jealous spirits, so wipe that worried look off your face. You're through with your plate? Okay, I'll have the rest. Why did you only eat half a piece of bread? You finish this bread, and I'll take the rest of this drumstick. Okay. Besides, there's another tale if you care to believe it, that children who are watched over by their grandmothers are especially protected from jealous spirits. It's one of the most powerful medicines in the world. Grandmothers are the best protection for little girls in the world. So you have nothing to worry about. Do you have enough blanket? Okay. Now let’s go to sleep before you start worrying again. I want to be awake before the household finds us in their doorway. Tomorrow I will find us a better place to sleep and a bed for you my darling chicken. Tomorrow we will have our own dinners and a roof over our heads. There, close your eyes and nuzzle your head in my chest. That's good. Let's dream about angels and love.

We live in an age where satire doesn't work.

Satire is soooooooo Twentieth Century, given that it was invented by hippies and librul college professors and can't be understood anyway.

Satire said greed is good. And behold, it is.

Satire began with A Modest Proposal, which, if published today, would have inspired sales of cookbooks and a line of cookware suitable for roasting Irish babies.

Instead it inspired a generation of anti-abortionists, one of whom, while initially an ardent fan of satire, has now come to realize that satire doesn't work.

Satire, like leadership, is the ability to ignore and subvert the will of the majority while claiming to represent it.

Today people understand that if everyone in their social circle believes something, then it's true beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Today people propose modest proposals with a completely straight face, unaware that (once upon a time) a modest proposal was considered immodest.

And satire is just a synonym for wit.

Can University Presses survive this recession?

My local newspaper of choice recently printed an AP article about the possible demise of Louisiana State University Press. Seems in an era where universities are being squeezed of funding by their states, one likely victim will be the University Press.

Chancellor Michael Martin doesn't question the prestige the Louisiana State University Press brings to his school, with Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction and poetry, tomes on Southern history and culture and other noted works to its credit.

What it doesn't bring in is revenue, and, like cash-strapped colleges across the country, LSU is getting tired of propping up its press.

The school has said the 74-year-old original publisher of "A Confederacy of Dunces" doesn't generate enough money to independently function.

Fiction International understands the problem, which is why we began a drive to increase revenue. We applied a few basic accounting techniques to get expenses in line, then started (and continue) looking for subscribers. We created an online presence (including this blog) and went looking for past, present, and future contributors and avid readers.

The result is a journal that is - for now - making enough money to cover our publishing costs. A journal that is - for now - safe from the university's budget ax.

Who will be hurt most by this latest cost-cutting move by universities are the contributors, most of whom teach and need the publishing credit to retain their jobs. There are few markets for short fiction and poetry, and most are affiliated with a University, so losing fiction and poetry journals will be a severe blow.

If a university wants to save their publications, they need to find within their department an administrator who knows both literature and business. Imagine the revenue LSU Press would have if it had - for example - the publishing revenue from A Confederacy of Dunces when it was hot, instead of well after its money-generating days were over. (LSU Press quietly resumed publication of the Larg-Print version, while Penguin Classics publishes the version assigned by literature classes.)

So could LSU Press or any other university press make enough changes in their way of thinking about literature and the marketplace to increase their revenue enough to survive the recession? Yes they can.

Dying for art's sake

Richard North Patterson, prolific writer of thrillers, has written a novel based on the wrongful conviction and execution of Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Mr. Saro-Wiwa, a popular author who helped create a peaceful mass movement on behalf of the Ogoni people, was executed in November 1995 along with eight other environmental and human rights activists on what many contended were trumped-up murder charges. His body was burned with acid and thrown in an unmarked grave.

. . .

Fourteen years have passed. General Abacha has died, and Mr. Saro-Wiwa has had a proper burial, but the circumstances surrounding the nine executions, along with related incidents of brutal attacks and torture, are getting another hearing. This month the Wiwa family’s lawsuit against Royal Dutch Shell over its role in those events goes to trial in federal court in Manhattan.

Fiction International's recent theme, The Artist in Wartime, asked artists to write about war and other opressive acts of tyrants. Mr. Saro-Wiwa died because his writings provoked the ultimate in corporate/polifical tyranny. Can you, as an artist, be as brave?

Watch an interview of Richard North Patterson as he describes how he chose Mr. Saro-Wiwa as a subject for Eclipse. Oh, and enjoy the Chevron commercial that begins the Patterson interview.

Writers Living in Economic War Zones

Harold Bloom just published an article about how the lessons learned from an economic meltdown informed his writing. The writer? Ralph Waldo Emerson.

While Emerson is a great source for "self-reliance" and "transcendence" in a country gone mad from greed and power, other writers -- like Walt Whitman (who can teach us about transcending war) and Henry David Thoreau (who can teach us about transcending both greed and war) are Emerson's equals -- not his pupils, as Bloom suggests. (Bloom does love a hierarchy!)

               

Harold Jaffe, in Rain Taxi

Author Harold Jaffe just posted an interview he did with Larry Fondation for Rain Taxi, which is being published Summer 2008. In it he defines 'docufiction,' discusses his newest docufictions, and offers observations about contemporary society. An excerpt:

Official culture's facility to deceive is infinitely more advanced than in the Sixties. Successful revolutionary models are either not represented or brazenly misrepresented. And Americans are trained to rely on official representations far more than on their unmediated experiences.

Among other lies, we are told that the worldwide student revolt in '68 was a failure, that revolution as such has lost its purchase, when in truth revolution and the ethical dissent which leads to revolution are ongoing, perennial.

Pornography... and Censorship

Editor Harold Jaffe just posted a 1992 interview he did about Fiction International's Pornography & Censorship issue. The interview, conducted by Janice Wynborne of KPBS Radio, highlighted the difficulty of conducting an "adult" conversation about what consitutes pornography in our society.

The issue is still for sale - and, in fact, is now 50% off. See http://www.fictioninternational.com for more details.

Harold Jaffe's "Revolutionary Brain"

Here's another docufiction from Harold Jaffe's latest collection, Orfeo, called "Revolutionary Brain":


It has emerged that the brains of three leading members of the violent revolutionary group, the Red Army Faction (RAF), including its co-founder, Andreas Baader, have disappeared after being preserved for scientific research.

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The grisly revelation comes just days after the twin daughters of Ulrike Meinhof, the other RAF founder, finally won permission to have her brain returned for burial.

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Meinhof's brain was extracted after her alleged suicide in jail in 1976, but for years its whereabouts remained a mystery.

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Last month it was revealed that the brain had been secretly preserved in a scientific laboratory in Frankfurt.

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The RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, began a campaign of political killings and kidnappings of senior business leaders in the 1970s aimed at overthrowing the German state which they called "Nazi capitalism."

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Meinhof allegedly hanged herself in her cell in Stuttgart's Stammheim Prison on May 9, 1976; her comrades Baader, Ensslin and Raspe were found dead in their cells in Stammheim Prison on "Death Night," October 18, 1977.

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The official report states that Baader and Raspe shot themselves to death and Ensslin hanged herself.

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The Red Army Faction cell block had been touted as the most secure prison block in the world; the press was filled with accounts of lawyers interrogated and searched for an hour or more before being admitted to visit their clients.

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When it was announced that Baader and Raspe shot themselves with guns smuggled into their cells, it was cynically assumed that the authorities assassinated them, as well as Ensslin and very possibly Meinhof the year before.

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Their dead bodies were promptly autopsied and their brains extracted and donated to "Science."

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Gottschalk König, CEO of the Neurological Research Institute of Heidelberg University where initial tests were done, admitted that he could not account for the whereabouts of the brains.

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They might have been moved to make way for other organs and finally burned, he said, but he would not rule out theft.

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Now Ulrike Meinhof's brain has suddenly reappeared, in the possession of a medical pathologist who insisted on anonymity.

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The anonymous pathologist said that Meinhof's brain surgery in 1962 in which a benign lesion was removed very likely contributed to her becoming one of Europe's most feared urban guerrillas.

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Her slide into "terror" would then be explained by her brain illness.

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Moreover, the anonymous pathologist claimed that clinical tests on Ulrike Meinhof's brain soon after her death cast doubt on her fitness to stand trial.

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Meinhof was considered the intellectual head of the Red Army Faction, a left-wing revolutionary group that spread fear across West Germany in the 1970s and into the 1980s, after her death.

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The anonymous pathologist confirmed that he carried out the research on Meinhof's brain over the last ten years primarily in a laboratory in Frankfurt.

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He told a news conference on Tuesday that he gained possession of the brain in 1997 after applying for permission to examine it.

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Previously it was held by a Stuttgart neurologist named Muehl who had conducted the autopsy after her suicide.

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The anonymous pathologist said that although there may have been other factors, the brain surgery in 1962 could have led to behavioral changes that turned Meinhof from a talented and ambitious journalist to co-founder of the revolutionary Red Army Faction.

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The RAF carried out a campaign of killings and bombings against leading industrial figures beginning in the 1970s.

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Many of those figures had been influential Nazis in the Third Reich.

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The anonymous pathologist’s involvement came to light last week, when Meinhof's twin daughters, in a law suit, insisted that her mother's brain was removed without the family's permission.

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Meinhof's twin daughters have also filed a criminal complaint against the anonymous pathologist, accusing him of disturbing the peace of the dead.

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They are seeking to have the brain buried with their mother's remains in Berlin.

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But the latest revelations indicate the medical authorities also had a morbid fascination with the revolutionary killers.

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An unauthorized plaster death mask of Andreas Baader had evidently been made by one of the anonymous pathologist's medical team who had mixed his own semen with the plaster.

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The anonymous pathologist claims not to know who was responsible.

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German authorities were said to be conducting DNA tests to uncover which of
the anonymous pathologist's medical team's semen was involved in Baader's death mask.

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Andreas Baader was a telegenic Brando-type bad boy who had turned to political terrorism for the methamphetamine-like rush it gave.

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The news of the plaster and semen death mask of Andreas Baader comes amid official concerns that a series of recent videos about the violent 1970s have portrayed the terrorist killers as pop icons.

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Celebrations of revolutionary violence unsettle German authorities who are always on the lookout for a resurgence of Nazism.

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Prosecutors are now examining documents from the time of Meinhof's death to establish how her brain came to be preserved for 30 years and whether any offence was committed.

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After the Revolution

MLF With Bad Nosejob Gets Huge Cum Facial 3 Blow Job WMVs
Teen Slut Swallowing Globs Of Hot Nut Butter 4 Latina MPEGs
Blonde & Jap Swap Ass Cum 3 Anal And Ass MPEGs
Vintage Sex Vids & Big Hairy Bushes 3 Amateur MPEGs
Pee Lovin Chick Asks For Mo' 4 Piss WMVs
Mex Babe Spreads Pink & Gets Meatstick 3 Hardcore MPEGs
Kinky Shaved Chubber Whips Her Whip 6 Big Tits WMVs
Thick Latina Pissed Then Boned 3 Hardcore MPEGs
MILF In Pantyhose Gets Phat Ass Stuffed 4 Mature Ladies WMVs
Big Mamma Wraps Her Boobs Round A Stiffy 6 BBW WMVs
Shaven Head Babe Takes Cock for the Rock 4 Hardcore MPEGs
Cougar Stalks Son's Pal & Fucks Him With Strapon 5 MPEGs
Hardcore Electrical Lesbo Bondage 6 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
Dominatrix Drills Fem Slaves Snatch 6 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
Bound, Gagged & Helpless 6 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
2 Young Cunts A'Cookin In The Kitchen 6 Fetish/Bizarre WMVs
Texas Twins Dip Their Honeypots in a Bubble Bath 2 WMVs
Babe Tossing Her Man's Salad 3 Fetish/Bizarre MPEGs
Samantha Slurps Every Last Drop Of Goo 4 Porn Stars MPEGs
Tiny Titted Megan Takes Two Big Dicks In Pooper 3 Latina MPEGs
Bianca Pornstar BJ, Piss & Browneye 3 Porn Stars WMVs
Lesbo Amateurs Squirm In Threesome 4 Lesbian MPEGs
Fisting Hard A Shaved Wet Puss 4 Fetish/Bizarre WMVs
Slutty Granny Does Herself With Baseball Bat 4 WMVs
Twelve Dudes Jizz On Blondes Face 3 Cum Shots MPEGs
Cheating Wives Do It For $$ 4 Amateur WMVs
Monster Black Cock Gives Pearl Necklace 3 Inter-Racial MPEGs
Mature Brit Bitch Milks Black Cock 4 Inter-Racial MPEGs
Lesbo Threesome Chain Pussy Licking 4 Lesbian WMVs
College Babes Fucking Sex Machines 3 Young Ladies WMVs
Two Muscle Bears Eating Each Other's Ass 5 Gay MPEGs
Horny Tranny Pleasures Two Studs 4 Trans WMVs
Roughneck Irish Man Jacks His Cock 6 Gay MPEGs
Naive Blonde Giving Backseat Blowjob 4 Cum Shots MPEGs
Ebony Plump Rumps Getting Humped By Horsedick 8 MPEGs
Phat Slut Tugs On Cock Till She Gets Her Face Painted 3 MPEGs
Stranger Licks Granny's Snatch In Graveyard 4 Hardcore MPEGs
Phat MLF Boned Hard On Bar Stool 6 Mature Ladies MPEGs
Cutie Daphaney Gets A Long Hard Bonin 4 hardcore WMVs
Tiny Asian Girls Smoke Huge Cigars 4 Inter-Racial WMVs
Kinky Lesbo Powerplay 6 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
Uh-Oh A Dominatrix Wearing Glasses 6 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
Chick In Chains Gets Her Snatch Stretched 6 Fetish WMVs
3 Young Babes Play With Mud 4 Young Ladies MPEGs
Tranny Porks Her Eager Boyfriend 6 Trans WMVs
Brunette & Redhead Trade Anal Creampie 5 Anal And Ass MPEGs
Wifey With Huge Melons Facialized 3 Big Tits WMVs
Skinny Goth Does Gloryhole In Raunchy Loo 2 Blow Jobs WMVs
Kristina Flashing 32ddds In Convenience Store 4 Big Tits WMVs
Asian Beaver Balling Big Dick 9 Asian WMVs
Anime Hardcore Action 6 Anime MPEGs
Milf And Young Hottie Share A Big Cock 3 Hardcore MPEGs
Hot Pigtail Pisses Boyfriend 3 Hardcore MPEGs
White Boys Work Over Busty Nubian 3 Inter-Racial MPEGs
Nice Nanny Gets Rammed In The Browneye 5 Hardcore WMVs
Wrinkly Phat Granny Drilled On Barstool 3 Mature Ladies MPEGs
Mesh Covered Ebony Gangbanged By Rednecks 3 Black MPEGs
Tiny Little Ripe Rump Slathered In Cream 3 Young Ladies MPEGs
Indian Chick Gobbles Three Dudes Creamy Curry 4 Asian WMVs
Twink & Bear In Raunchy Suck N Fuck 6 Gay WMVs
Busty Pregnant Babe Gets Her Milk Pumped 4 Fetish WMVs
Sperm Spitting Bukkake Fetish Panic 4 Asian WMVs
Euro MMF Cumshot Extravaganza 3 Group WMVs
Hot Brunette Gets Nasty Rimjob 3 Anal And Ass MPEGs
Blonde Pigtail Chick Getting Monster Facial 4 Young Ladies WMVs
Mature Street Skank Plays Suck And Tell 3 Hardcore WMVs
Slave Slut Gets It In Bdsm Dungeon 6 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
Chubby Using Toes To Diddle Hard Cock To Cum 4 BBW WMVs
Asian Squatting & Peeing 4 Fetish/Bizarre WMVs
Dutch & German Milk Enemas 5 Fetish/Bizarre WMVs
Naughty Girl Spanked & Pissed 4 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
Big Breasted Jane In Titty Torments 6 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
Wrestler Gets Cameltoe Puss Licked 6 Lesbian WMVs
High School Hotshot Bones Bubble Booty Cheerleader 5 WMVs
Petite Lisa Loves Black Ghetto Cock 3 Inter-Racial WMVs
Preggo Babe Squirting Hot Milk From Nips 4 Amateur WMVs
Poon Hounds Jacking Clits And Puss Squirting 4 Lesbian MPEGs
Peeing Amateur Filmed By Voyeur Cam 4 Voyeur MPEGs
Crazy voyeur Creaming On Sleeping Girl Boobs 5 Voyeur MPEGs
Hentai Girl Getting Pussy Hammered 4 Anime MPEGs
Natasha 3 Porn Stars MPEGs
Cute Redhead Jerks Sperm From A Cock 4 Cum Shots MPEGs
Zitty Bitch Rides The Sybian 4 Amateur MPEGs
Exploited Chick Forced To Swallow Monster Dong 3 Cum Shots MPEGs
Hairy Bus Driver Gets Good Student Pussy 3 Young Ladies MPEGs
Goth Babe Gets Ass Slammed And Gaped 4 Anal And Ass MPEGs
Naughty Blonde Licks Black Guys Ass 4 Inter-Racial MPEGs
Ass Worship Facesitting 3 Fetish/Bizarre WMVs
Lady Sonia Ass-Smothering 5 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
Sweet Tiny Pornstar Monalisa Doggiestyle 4 Young Ladies MPEGs
Creamy Nurse In Homemade Hardcore 4 Amateur MPEGs
Petite Chicks Swapping Cum 4 Blow Jobs And Cum Shots MPEGs
Young Cutie Gets Double Dicked 7 Anal And Ass WMVs
Milf Double Penetrated In A Threesome 4 Mature Ladies MPEGs
Blonde Cougar In Hardcore Threesome 3 Mature Ladies MPEGs
Cumaholic Babe Doing Deepthroat 5 Fetish/Bizarre MPEGs
3 Jap Chicks Assboned & Creamed 4 Group MPEGs
Housewife Taking A Huge Schlong In Butt 6 Inter-Racial WMVs
First Gay Experience 4 Gay WMVs
Lola Sucks A Priests Holy Rod 3 Porn Stars MPEGs WMVs
Guy Eating Carrot Out Of Her Ass 4 Asian WMVs
Petite Blonde Chewing Mandingo Nuts 4 Inter-Racial MPEGs

Makes "Reefer Madness" Look Intelligent

Take a look at the government's latest attempt to scare children away from cannabis: http://www.abovetheinfluence.com/stoners/.

The site does convince one that marijuana decreases intelligence -- in drug haters.

Please, send every American to this site. After all, it was paid for entirely by your tax dollars. Remember that the next time you vote for someone like Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens or California Rep. Randall "Top Gun" Cunningham, who treat our government as their personal cash cow and set up fake "wars" so their friends can also enrich themelves at our expense, this is what you are getting for the money.

"Hijab," by Harold Jaffe

Here's a docufiction from Harold Jaffe's latest collection, Orfeo:


French bureaucrat and Muslim teenager at the entrance to the lycée outside Paris.

     Bonjour Mlle.
     You are required to remove your headscarf.

     Bonjour Monsieur.
     I never remove the hijab in public.

     This is a state-supported lycée, Mlle.
     It is not a mosque.
     It is not a souk.
     In France we maintain separation of church and state.
     That is the established policy.

     We understood the established policy to be cohabitation.
     Former colonies are encouraged to cohabit with their benefactors—you white French—with their native customs intact.
     Cohabitation you virtuously opposed to assimilation, such as the United States promotes, where everyone is expected to suppress their native language and staple the American flag to their forehead, indistinguishable one from the other.

     Mlle, the correct opposition is not between cohabitation and assimilation but between a secular state such as we have in France and a theocracy.

     Is the US then a theocracy?

     Without question.


Two global reprobates slouching outside the Bourse, in Paris.

     Who set the Reichstag fire in 1933 and as a consequence facilitated Hitler?

     The Jew.

     Who toppled the World Trade Center in 2001 and as a consequence facilitated Bush?

     The Muslim.

     Who "emigrated mentally" while living unmolested in Nazi Germany and Austria?

     "Aryan" intellectuals and artists.
     With the exception of a very small minority.

     Who, post 9/11, duct-taped US intellectuals and artists into the condominiums of their minds?

     The crusading US government.
     Taking a page from the Red-baiting McCarthy era.
     Even as the US government was apologizing for actual McCarthyism as a shameless departure from capitalist democracy's firmest values.

     The US also apologized for interning Japanese-Americans, then did it all over again with Muslim-Americans.
     9/11 gave them the excuse to reinvent history.

     As farce.

     Farcical genocide.


French bureaucrat and Muslim teenager at the entrance to the lycée outside Paris.

     Mlle, the ordinance is in place.
     Nor does it refer exclusively to Muslims.
     Conspicuous religious items of various kinds are prohibited.
     Jews are forbidden to wear skullcaps.
     Hindus are forbidden to paint their faces.
     Christians are forbidden to wear visible crosses larger than three centimeters.

     Are Catholic nuns forbidden to wear head coverings?

     Catholic nuns would have gone beyond the lycée, Mlle.
     The ordinance does not apply to education beyond the lycée...

     Why not?

     That should be self-evident, Mlle.
     The intention of the ordinance is to instill the ideal of secular education in the young.
     Before religious habits or customs become irreversible.
     Our obligation is to attend to children who enter the French public school system, and the fact is that young Muslim females are often coerced into wearing the headscarf.

     Wearing the hijab is a fundamental principle of Islamic teaching, Monsieur.
     To assert that the hijab is forced on Muslim females is both ignorant and paternalistic.
     The "secularism" you are attempting to impose is to us another sign of intolerance towards the growing Muslim community.

     I refuse to engage in an argument about semantics, Mlle.
     That is the way the ordinance reads.


Two global reprobates slouching outside the Bourse, in Paris.

     When I say hijab what comes to mind?

     The veil.
     Taking the veil.
     Entering the convent.
     France, for example, is proud of its various orders of nuns, "les bonnes soeurs."
     The sisters are picturesque; they don't disrupt the body politic; they have an esthetic dimension.

     Gliding about in their habits noirs.
     Esthetic, bien sur.

     I think too of raising the veil, uncovering.
     Which invokes the practice of clitorectomy or infibulation.
     What percentage of Islamic females worldwide are subjected to this practice?

     Legitimate numbers would be hard to come by.
     I wouldn’t trust whatever estimates the "First World" puts out there.
     What percentage of males worldwide are subjected to circumcision?

     Are clitorectomy and circumcision comparable?

     You tell me.

     Couldn't the veil also be identified with movement induced by natural forces.
     The aeolian harp stroked by the wind.
     Creative imagination without artifice.

     There is artifice in the construction of the harp.
     Winds are increasingly produced by global warming disruptions of the weather cycles.

     What does hijab signify to you?

     The sacred prepuce of its white male leaders.


French bureaucrat and Muslim teenager at the entrance to the lycée outside Paris.

     France--before Sarkozy--officially objected to the invasion of Iraq.
     France objected to Israel's violent annexation of Palestine.
     But what France is doing in its own country to its female Muslim minority is no less prejudicial.

     One thing has nothing to do with another, Mlle.
     The ordinance is unambiguous.
     Islamic females of lycée age are required to remove their head and face coverings while in the lycée or on the grounds of the lycée.
     Once you leave the lycée you may dress and do as you please.
     So long as it is within the law.

     Senegalese and Ivory Coast former subjects of lycée age are not required to remove their dashikis and bubas.
     Tunisian, Algerian and Moroccan former subjects of lycée age are not required to remove their kaftans and jubbahs.
     Caribbean former subjects are not required to undo their dreadlocks.
     It is just your orthodox Muslim females of lycée age who are required to remove their hijabs, correct?
     What is it about young Muslim females that intimidates their former colonial occupier?

     You are imagining things, Mlle.
     The official ordinance reads as I indicated.
     I do not propose to argue with you over niceties.


Two global reprobates slouching outside the Bourse, in Paris.

     Except for its Muslims and Jews, France is officially uncircumcised.

     What if someone not Muslim or Jewish elects to be circumcised?

     Unless for reasons of health, which must be officially vetted, he will have to do it outside the law.
     Hijab—as a so-to-speak implied prepuce--can also signify the formal body coverings of its political leaders, graduates of the same elite écoles.
     Have you noticed how indistinguishable France's presidents and prime ministers--Giscard, Pompidou, Mitterand, Chirac—look in their somber double-breasted suits?
     Pale, stiff, fastidious, marmoreal.

     Sarkozy isn't marmoreal.

     Sarkozy is arboreal.

     Was it William James who remarked that the sheerest of veils separates the mundane, agitated, war-making world from the world inhabited by the higher spirits?
     Yet this sheer, transparent veil is so infrequently parted.

     William James was American.
     I don’t read Americans.

     William James's younger brother Henry's platonic version of himself was as un Francais de plaisir.
     The father, Henry senior, was an internationalist and a Swedenborgian.
     Alice James, like Proust, was bedridden.
     Why don't you read Americans?

     They are without history.
     Virtually no lived history from which to draw.

     Is that less privileged than having a long history but drawing the same opportunistic conclusions?

     You mean the French?

     Not exclusively.


French bureaucrat and Muslim teenager at the entrance to the lycée outside Paris.

     Mlle, I will not stand here arguing with you.
     The ordinance is clear.
     If you or any among you wish to dispute it, that must be done formally and lawfully.

     You've repeated lawful several times.
     To you, law precedes justice; to us it is the other way round.
     Isn't it a fact that you formulate then implement laws as you choose, according to your own advantage?
     All the time professing that these laws are immutable, engraved in stone by your Christian god?

     Mlle, I have done my best to be courteous, even as you have insisted on arguing.
     Now you have come dangerously close to blasphemy.
     I hereby terminate this discussion.
     Good day, Mlle.

     You white French fuss about courtesy, which you use to mask your hypocrisy.
     We wonder whether you've considered the repercussions your anti-Islamic ordinance might produce.
     Good day, Monsieur.


Two global reprobates slouching outside the Bourse, in Paris.

     We were discussing the images invoked by the hijab, or veil.
     We've cited nuns; prepuces; the somber formal wear of our leaders; music stirred by the wind; clitorectomy and circumcision; the sheer veil which according to William James separates elevated vision from the every day.
     What about the now-defunct Red Chinese and their Bamboo Curtain?
     The now-defunct Soviets and their Iron Curtain?
     The privileged quartiers of Paris?
     The gated communities globally, with its tiny minority of nervous rich?

     And with its exponentially multiplying oppressed Muslim underclass.
     Enraged and desperate behind their Muslim curtain.
     Which could end up being the most horrific "veil" of all.
     Agreed?

     No.
     I believe the greatest horrors will be inflicted by the other side.

***

A French woman who alleged she had been the subject of an anti-Semitic attack invented the story, police sources now say.

The admission came shortly after the she was taken into custody--four days after the alleged assault on a commuter train south of Paris.

The 24-year-old woman claimed six men accused her of being Jewish, then forcibly cut off her clothes with sharp, long knives and spray-painted swastikas on her nude body.

The woman, who is not Jewish, has been detained for falsely reporting a crime, state prosecutor Didier Merleau-Ponty told AFP news agency.

She could face up to six months in prison and an 8,000-euro ($13,000) fine if convicted.

The case has sparked widespread condemnation amid concerns that anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise in France, which of course has a long and sordid history of anti-Semitism.

The men, described as of North African appearance and indeterminate age, are also said to have deliberately upended the woman's 8-month-old infant from its stroller.

The child fell on its head but was reportedly uninjured.

The woman claimed that about 20 people witnessed the attack but that nobody offered her support.

However, investigators, studying footage from surveillance cameras at the Gare d'Austerlitz station where the six alleged North African attackers were supposed to have exited, found no evidence to support the woman’s claim.

Nor has a single witness come forth even after urgent appeals in the newspapers and on television.

Now police sources who requested anonymity say that under "firm questioning" the woman has recanted her accusations. She has admitted cutting off her own clothes and spray-painting the swastikas on her naked body with the help of her boyfriend who is also in custody. Like her, the boyfriend is neither Jewish nor North African, but French and white.

Le Monde, the left-leaning French daily, reports that the same woman had filed several complaints in the past about being the victim of racist or fascist violence.

The reported brutality of the attack on the woman, its anti-Semitic character and the fact that no one came to her help provoked outrage.

It also added to the growing concern over racist and anti-Semitic attacks.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, who condemned the alleged assault as "pitiless and reprehensible," said he would deny clemency to any prisoner serving a sentence for a racist or anti-Semitic crime.

Government spokesman Jean-Francois Irigaray told RTL radio that the rising trend of anti-Semitic attacks was "a genuine evil" in France, even though the woman's case "proved to be imagined rather than real, as such."

Mark Twain and the (Spanish-American) War

Finally -- nearly 100 years after his death -- the MSM feels brave enough to acknowledge "the man Ernest Hemingway said all of modern American literature could be traced back to," Mark Twain, and how he utilized his art (writing) to thwart war and oppression.

His humor, Arnold sniffed, was "so attractive to the Philistine." It would be truer to say it was attractive to anyone who valued plain speaking and the kind of deadly wit that could cut through the cant and hypocrisy surrounding any topic, no matter how sensitive: war, sex, religion, even race. Twain was righteous without being pious, angry for all the right reasons and funny in all the right ways. You might say he gave virtue a good name.

Contrast this now-reverential endorsement of Twain's wit with NPR's and Fox News' reaction to comedian Al Franken's run for Senate.

Just as in Twain's time, conservatives have a love-hate relationship with artists (love making money off their product, hate their unconventional lifestyles). When it comes to art and politics converging, Americans have always hated the left-of-center artist who becomes involved in political campaigns or causes but love, and even elect, conservative "artist"-politicians.

Best Anti-Drug Film Ever

It's just over two hours long, but it is worth it.

Trickster

Harold Jaffe's novel "Jesus Coyote" re-appropriates the Manson Family myth as proscribed by the official culture, and brings us closer to a kind of truth via his narrative innovation, the docufiction. Ambitious in both narrative form and imaginative range, "Jesus Coyote" examines the characters and events surrounding the Manson Family (culminating in the Tate-LaBianca murders) from a variety of perspectives, including the victims (envisioned by Jaffe with great clarity and compassion), the women members of the Family, and finally Manson himself. Cagey, defiant and manipulative to the end, Manson has the last word in the mock interview that concludes this morally courageous, intellectually daring and unflinchingly honest look into this revealing and recent chapter of American cultural/criminal history.

The book can be purchased here:
http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Coyote-Harold-Jaffe/dp/1933293551

The publishers info is here:
http://www.rawdogscreaming.com/jesus.html

Damnation

I've recently seen a film by director Bela Tarr--Damnation. While I appreciated the film's decadant cynicism, and its sense of defeated existentialism, the thing I found most remarkable was a camera technique Tarr uses in virtually every scene of the film. It seems that always, when two figures are framed in a dramatic scene, Tarr pulls the camera back to pan across their surroundings. This forces the viewer to always regard the characters and their dilemmas in a larger, social dimension. No act, it seems, can be seen outside of its historical context (for Tarr here it's Hungarian society collapsing under the weight of Soviet occupation) It's a simple yet elegant technique--one I'll take with me.

A good introduction to Tarr's major films can be found here.

Spreading Peace and Democracy through the World

This image is from a painting by San Diego artist Craig Marshall.

STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE

This dead on blog reads like a "how to manual" for dealing with honkys of the North American subspecies.

David Simon Replies

Image from The Wire.

In an to us somewhat interesting and perhaps useful exchange, David Simon (creator of the HBO series "The Wire"), has resonded in the comments thread to a post by liberal commentator Matt Yglesias, blogger for The Atlantic. Yglesias takes exception to "The Wire" on ideological grounds; Simon's reply is here excerpted:

"Writing to affirm what people are saying about my faith in individuals to rebel against rigged systems and exert for dignity, while at the same time doubtful that the institutions of a capital-obsessed oligarchy will reform themselves short of outright economic depression (New Deal, the rise of collective bargaining) or systemic moral failure that actually threatens middle-class lives (Vietnam and the resulting, though brief commitment to rethinking our brutal foreign-policy footprints around the world). The Wire is dissent; it argues that our systems are no longer viable for the greater good of the most, that America is no longer operating as a utilitarian and democratic experiment. If you are not comfortable with that notion, you won't agree with some of the tonalities of the show. I would argue that people comfortable with the economic and political trends in the United States right now -- and thinking that the nation and its institutions are equipped to respond meaningfully to the problems depicted with some care and accuracy on The Wire (we reported each season fresh, we did not write solely from memory) -- well, perhaps they're playing with the tuning knobs when the back of the appliance is in flames.

Does that mean The Wire is without humanist affection for its characters? Or that it doesn't admire characters who act in a selfless or benign fashion? Camus rightly argues that to commit to a just cause against overwhelming odds is absurd. He further argues that not to commit is equally absurd. Only one choice, however, offers the slightest chance for dignity. And dignity matters.

All that said, I am the product of a C-average GPA and a general studies degree from a state university and thirteen years of careful reporting about one rustbelt city. Hell do I know. Maybe my head is up my ass.

If The Wire is too pessimistic about the future of the American empire -- and I've read my Toynbee and Chomsky, so I actually think a darker vision could be credibly argued -- no one will be more pleased than me as I am, well, American."

The post can be found here.