October 24, 2011
October 24, 2011
Trade liberty for safety or money and you'll end up with neither. Liberty, like a grain of salt, easily dissolves.
The power of questioning -- not simply believing -- has no friends. Yet liberty depends on it. ***
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Note from the Editors:
The occupation of Iraq is about to come to a fitting end: the U.S. forced out with its tail between its legs, over a trillion dollars lighter, and nothing to show for it but a dead Saddam Hussein, an obliterated, non-Democratic Iraq, nary an oil contract for an American firm -- and not one leader held accountable for this unjust war. Mission Accomplished! Let's hope that the occupation of Wall Street, which is spilling into Main Streets across the country and the globe, will prove more successful. According to Jonah Raskin, the authors of the First Amendment would be aghast to learn that corporations have seized hold of its rights at the expense of the people, but the Occupy Wall Street protesters are carrying on the spirit of those who throughout history have defended it. Michael DeLang's a bit more skeptical given that political theater has supplanted process and any potential impact of organized activism, and he suggests we each need to create a small piece of a better world, and Joel Hirschhorn asks if this new movement will do what the Tea Party failed to do; that is, passionately attack the two-party oligarchy and the integrity of the US political system controlled by it. Only time will tell...
Meanwhile, Malthusians continue to overpopulate this planet, and Michael Barker reviews one of their major influences, William Vogt's 1948 book Road to Survival. Gilles d'Aymery is mind-numbed by the violence and unrest that continues around the globe from Yemen to Italy, the latter from which Fabio De Propris discusses the strange position of Italian teachers-writers when describing the decline of the country's educational system.
Our cultural corner is occupied by Peter Byrne's review of the HBO miniseries based on James M. Cain's novel Mildred Pierce -- five full hours in which the detour into noir territory is completely erased; Part I of Raju Peddada's series on Buster Keaton, whose films provided a temporary escape in our collective mirth by depicting our common existential conundrums; and Guido Monte's haunting words of love and madness about the writer Alda Merini and her message of pain and unveiling. We close with your letters, including an excellent analysis, from the Bureau of Public Secrets, of the Occupy Wall Street movement and its potential impact, which may influence your opinion on the first three articles. Please, exercise your First Amendment rights and send us your feedback.
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Patterns Which Connect
The First Amendment Redux
Two hundred and twenty years ago, a young American revolutionary named James Madison wrote what are perhaps the most significant words in the history of American law and jurisprudence. A Virginian and a fierce advocate of liberty with deep suspicions of federal government, Madison set down 46 words that could not have been uttered with more clarity and simplicity, though they have been interpreted, reinterpreted, deconstructed, and reconstructed thousands of times. More... Jonah Raskin is a professor and chair of communication studies at Sonoma State University, California.
It Was Before My Time
It was before my time. I didn't become aware of any political scene until my adolescence in the sixties. But, based on my readings, it appears that American electoral politics was once a pure and open democratic process. By pure, I don't mean to imply that there weren't character assassinations, scurrilous shenanigans, back-room deals, or other various corruptive efforts to undermine and circumvent populist influence on the results of the process. But these blemishes were still essentially part and parcel of an overall process that admitted, and even encouraged, participation of the general populace and was aimed at a consensus national polity. More... Michael DeLang is a self-defined middle-aged blue collar worker in the trucking industry who lives in Golden, Colorado.
Awful Reasons Why Obama Could Get Reelected
I can hardly imagine how people in other countries fathom US politics. Here we are, finally, seeing street protests in many American cities that are long overdue, just like those that helped overturn governments in Egypt and Tunisia and fight governments in England and other European nations. The Occupy Wall Street and similar protests are totally justified, because the vast majority of Americans have been viciously abused by a greed-driven, corrupt political and economic system designed to benefit the rich and powerful. But will these protests produce results? More... Joel S. Hirschhorn is the author of Delusional Democracy and Sprawl Kills.
William Vogt And Malthusian Conservation
Following the end of World War II, capitalist commentators all over the world began expounding self-serving diagnoses for the root causes of war. According to many leading writers of the day, human population growth was seen as the determining reason for the launch of wars -- a Malthusian argument that gained much traction with Guy Irving Burch and Elmer Pendell's book Human Breeding and Survival: Population Roads to Peace or War (Population Reference Bureau, 1945). Of course, such Malthusian mislogic had long been married to elite conservationist thought, and in 1948 when William Vogt published Road to Survival, he acknowledged his intellectual debt of gratitude to Guy Irving Burch. More... Michael Barker is an independent researcher who currently resides in the UK.
Ongoing Violence
It's been a couple of numbing weeks in these quarters. But for the exception of the peaceful Occupy Wall Street movement, all news watched or read was about portraying violence -- physical, military, economic -- all over the world. It seems that the further the worldwide crisis is deepening, the human response is to plunge into a tragic, almost Shakespearean path littered with blood and tears. The only answer decision-makers can muster to confront the woes that are ailing our societies is through more hatred of the Other, more domination, more brutality. More... Gilles d'Aymery is Swans' publisher and co-editor.
Storytelling And Social Action: Italian Teacher-Writers
We are going to focus here on Italian writers who are also teachers and who in one or more of their books write about school. The two-fold role of any such writer-teacher places him in a strange position. Think of a mirror that reflects another mirror in a room empty but for the two mirrors face-to-face. An axiom tells us that every literary text, from an essay to the most trivial anecdote, also embodies a second intention. The writer who wishes to speak of his experience as a teacher also wishes to tell a story. More... Fabio De Propris is a teacher, writer, and translator who lives in Rome, Italy.
Arts & Culture
Shortcuts To Comfort: James M. Cain
America can't leave James M. Cain alone. The HBO TV miniseries based on his novel Mildred Pierce is only the most recent Cain jolt to the national nervous system. An acute European saw Cain's relevance as early as 1943. That was only nine years after Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice was published in 1934 and three years before Tay Garnett filmed it in Hollywood in 1946. More... Peter Byrne is an American-born teacher and writer who lives in Lecce, Italy.
The Forgotten Auteur
Over a generation ago, two years after the VHS-VCR format, and four years before the CD, the "Home Video Disc format" called Laser disc came into the market, ushering in the "Laser" technology for image archiving and the movies. This licensed commercial optical storage medium that NASA had relied on was licensed out in 1978 as the "Optical Videodisc System" to Pioneer Electronics, who then marketed it under the brand name "LaserDisc." The technologies and concepts behind laser disc are the forerunners of the compact disc and DVD today. More... Raju Peddada is an industrial designer who lives in Des Plaines, Illinois.
Multilingual Poetry
To Alda Merini
l'image-épiphanie du monde Guido Monte teaches Italian and Latin literature in Palermo, Italy.
Letters to the Editor
An excellent analysis, from the Bureau of Public Secrets, of the Occupy Wall Street movement and its potential impact, and the financial and political link between the National Endowment for Democracy and Nobel Peace Prize recipients. More... We appreciate your comments. Please, remember to sign your e-mails with your real name and add your city, state, country, address and phone number. If we publish your opinion we will only include your name, city, state, and country. Thank you.
Swans by Subject
- Activism under the Radar Screen Keep in Mind...
– Fourteen million trees are cut down in the U.S. each year to supply paper bags nationwide. – According to researchers at the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Agriculture, an average of more than 7 calories of fossil fuel is burned up for every calorie of energy we get from our food. So, it takes 3,500 calories of fossil fuel to eat your 500-calorie breakfast. – "They" say that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary to end the Pacific War and save lives. Was Hiroshima necessary? You be the judge. What will "they" say once they have nuked Iran? – Please support Swans. – You can syndicate Swans with our RSS Feed, courtesy of Sean M. Burke. – Support your local businesses. – Say NO to Amazon.com and the corporate bookchains! Support your local independent bookstores! Check Independent Bookstores in the U.S. and Canada. – You can visit Swans READING ROOM for some books we recommend. – Every time you reload the front page, one of 87 different quotes appears randomly in the left margin. – Thank you for visiting Swans and for reading its contents. Endeavor to become an agent of change. – Let us know if you wish to receive an e-mail regarding each new edition (twice a month) with the Note from the Editors, and please become a financial subscriber. See our Donate page.
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