Dec. 25

And while little by little Christmas has lost its truth for us as an anniversary, it has at the same time, through the gentle emanation of accumulated memories, taken on a more and more living reality, in which candlelight … the smell of its tangerines imbibing the warmth of heated rooms, the gaiety of its cold and its fires, the scent of tea and mimosa, return to us overlaid with the delectable honey of our personality, which we have unconsciously been depositing over the years during which—engrossed in selfish pursuits—we paid no attention to it, and now suddenly it sets our hearts to beating . . .
--Proust, letters

Homage to Catalonia

In Catalonia, for the first few months, most of the actual power was in the hands of the Anarcho-Syndicalists, who controlled most of the key industries. The thing that had happened in Spain was, in fact, not merely a civil war, but the beginning of a revolution. It is this fact that the anti-Fascist press outside Spain has made it is special business to obscure...

...I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. ... There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life—snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.—had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master. Of course such a state of affairs could not last. It was simply a temporary and local phase in an enormous game that is being played over the whole surface of the earth. But it lasted long enough to have its effect upon anyone who experienced it. ... One had been in a community where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism, where the word “comrade” stood for comradeship and not, as in most countries, for humbug. ... In that community where no one was on the make, where there was a shortage of everything but no privilege and no boot-licking, one got, perhaps, a crude taste of what the opening stages of Socialism might be like. ... The effect was to make my desire to see Socialism established much more actual than it had been before. ... This period which then seemed so futile and eventless is now of great importance to me. It is so different from the rest of my life that already it has taken on the magic quality which, as a rule, belongs only to memories that are years old. It was beastly while it was happening, but it is a good patch for my mind to browse upon. I wish I could convey to you the atmosphere of that time...

...The Spanish bourgeoisie saw their chance of crushing the labour movement, and took it, aided by the Nazis and by the forces of reaction all over the world... In essence it was a class war. If it had been won, the cause of the common people everywhere would have been strengthened. It was lost, and the dividend-drawers all over the world rubbed their hands. That was the real issue; all else was froth on its surface... All the considerations are likely to make one falter—the siren voices of a Petain or of a Gandhi, the inescapable fact that in order to fight one has to degrade oneself, the equivocal moral position of Britain, with its democratic phrases and its coolie empire, the sinister development of Soviet Russia, the squalid farce of left-wing politics—all this fades away and one sees only the struggle of the gradually awakening common people against the lords of property and their hired bumsuckers. The question is very simple

--George Orwell, HOMAGE TO CATALONIA. 50, 101-103, 233, 240, 245

you read it here first

--After protesters clashed violently with the police inside and outside the New Orleans City Council chambers on Thursday, the Council voted unanimously to allow the federal government to demolish 4500 apartments in the four biggest public housing projects here.-NYT A27----Old Line Families Escape Worst of Flood and Plot the Future. Mr. Reiss said he and other business leaders will no longer tolerate living in a dangerous city with bad schools and substandard municipal services. “Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way … “ The power elite of NOLA … insist the remade city won’t simply restore the old order. –WSJ, A-12 Sept. 12, 2005 [sic]

--In a 1963 essay for Ayn Rand’s newsletter, Alan Greenspan dismissed as a “collectivist” myth the idea that businessmen, left to their own devices, “would attempt to sell unsafe food and drugs and fraudulent securities, and shoddy buildings.” On the contrary, he declared, “it is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for honest dealings and a quality product.” NYT A31-- Gaitskill gives Granite/Rand the needling she deserves, and it would all be very funny except for the fact that people beyond Dorothy take Rand seriously. People like Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, and a number of other people on the Right who now enjoy positions of great power and influence in this country. Indeed, the rest of the people on the Right who might not seem inclined to share the religionless vision of Rand and Greenspan nevertheless seem to embrace the worldview summarized in The Gods Disdained excerpt given above. Again: The book was about the struggle of a few isolated, superior people to ward off the attacks of the mean-minded majority as they created all the beautiful important things in the world while having incredible sex with each other. It ended with almost all the inferior majority being blown up in chemical disasters, perishing in airplane wrecks or collapsing buildings, all more or less simultaneously, all as an indirect result of their own inferiority. (163) With some minor adjustments, the paragraph might well describe the essence of the Left Behind fantasies of the Christian Nazis who revel in their dreams of apocalypse. In short, it might be fine if these issues of power, abuse, and abasement were confined to the bedroom. Unfortunately they leak and pour into offices, schoolyards, workplaces, and politics. EXTREME PROUST, p. 337

Ozymandias

Dec. 20, 2007

--Morgan Stanley ... received a $5 billion investment from a Chinese fund in exchange for a 9.9% stake. WSJ A1 (in 1907 JP Morgan bailed the USA out of a depression)

--kitsch is the absolute denial of shit—Milan Kundera—HARPERS, p99 Dec. 2007

--The preoccupation with decay and sapped energy relates directly to the human condition. –Cliché #3, ART CRITICISM 101: YOU TOO CAN BE AN ART CRITIC

your government at work

...according to current and former administration and intelligence officials The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged. NYT A1 probably because no one has any clear recollection of anything

--The Federal Reserve, acknowledging that home mortgage lenders aggressively sold deceptive loans to borrowers who had little chance of repaying them, proposed a broad set of restrictions Tuesday on exotic mortgages and high-cost loans for people with weak credit. NYT A1—cows and horses out of barn, mice still there

Catching Americans who Travel illegally to Cuba or who purchase cigars, rum or other products from the island may be distracting some American government agencies from higher-priority missions like fighting terrorism and combating narcotics traffic, a government audit released Wednesday says. NYT A3—feel safer yet? Or is this why Castro is going to retire?

--Despite a significant reduction in violence in Iraq over the past three months, the Iraqi government has made little headway in improving the delivery of electricity, health care and other essential services, a new Pentagon report said Tuesday. NYT A6 where is Market God when we need Him?

--Thousands of Colorado’s electronic voting machines do not work properly and have been decertified NYT A14 another surprise

--A Texas higher education panel has recommended allowing a Bibl-based Institute for Creation Research to offer online master’s degrees in science education. NYT A16 no surprise that God needs protection from Texas

--...as literary reading erodes, so does open-mindedness. ... readers are more likely to exercise, visit museums and engage in civic activities. WSJ B11, quoting NEW YORKER

--A week after Hurricane Katrina, a FEMA official ... issued a directive that would have cut through the red tape... FEMA higher-ups countermanded the order. SBT A9

Dec. 18, 2007

--Russia delivers its nuclear fuel to plan in Iran; a setback for the US. NYT A1. . . . overall the result is easy to predict: a regulatory pole will emerge in Eurasia, one closer to the geographic center of the world, and there will be a slowdown in the flow of goods, capital, and migration that currently nourishes the United States. The United States will then have to live like other nations, notably by reigning in its huge trade deficit, a constraint that would imply a 15 to 20 percent drop in the standard of living of the population. . . Todd, AFTER THE EMPIRE (2003) 199

--...thousands of New Orleanians forced out by Hurricane Katrina are settling in across the Gulf Coast, breaking their ties with the damaged city... NYT A1--: --Old Line Families Escape Worst of Flood and Plot the Future. Mr. Reiss said he and other business leaders will no longer tolerate living in a dangerous city with bad schools and substandard municipal services. “Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way … “ The power elite of NOLA … insist the remade city won’t simply restore the old order. –WSJ, A-12 Sept. 12, 2005

-... American farmers are growing more corn than at any time since the 1940s. And sea life in the Gulf of Mexico is paying the price. The nation’s corn crop is fertilized with millions of pounds of nitrogen-based fertilizer. And when that nitrogen runs off fields in Corn Belt states, It makes its way to the Mississippi River and eventually pours into the Gulf, where it contributes to a growing “dead zone”—a 7900 square mile patch so depleted of oxygen that fish, crabs and shrimp suffocate. SBT A3 For an American like me, growing up linked to a very different food chain, yet one that is also rooted in a field of corn, NOT to think of himself as a corn person suggests either a failure of imagination or a triumph of capitalism... You are what you eat, it’s often said, and if that is true, then what we mostly are is corn—more precisely, processed corn. OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA p. 20

--infused with a heightened awareness of life and death-.—ART CRITICISM 101, YOU TOO CAN BE AN ART CRITIC (cliché #2)

Dec. 13-17

--Deeply concerned about the prospect of failure in Afghanistan the Bush administration and NATO have begun three top-to-bottom reviews of the entire mission... NYT 12-16-07, A1

--Iraq’s death squads have become more careful about hiding their victims’ bodies, making it hard to assess how much power they retain... WSJ, 12-17-07 B8

--Electric-shock techniques used by Chicago police in the 1970s and described in a report by the city echoed those used by US soldiers in Vietnam in the 1960s. Most of the alleged incidents implicated former commander Jon Burge, a decorated Vietnam war veteran. WSJ 12-17-07 B8

--His work here and elsewhere has a lot to do with internal and eternal and the space in between.—ART CRITICISM 101, YOU TOO CAN BE AN ART CRITIC (cliché #1)

--Policewomen in Iraq have been told to hand in their guns in the latest sign of cultural and religious conservatism... WSJ B12 Dec. 12, 2007 a republican, if not democratic, Iraq

--Alberto Gonzales named ABA’s Lawyer of the Year. The monthly magazine gave awards to lawyers who made the most news... “Think about Time magazine’s Person of the Year,” editor and publisher Adams said. “In years past they’ve named people like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin....” SBT A3 Dec. 13, 2007