January 16, 2012
January 16, 2012
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:
After Friday's closing bell of the stock market, in that shadowy space between the workweek and the weekend where bad news is stashed in the hopes it will be lost among the football playoffs and the Budweiser, Standard & Poor's announced the downgrading of nine EU countries' credit ratings, despite serious measures being taken to shore up their economies. Gilles d'Aymery has been following and analyzing the financial warfare being launched against the eurozone, and he scrutinizes the handful of so-called S&P experts whose "beliefs" will have serious consequences -- so much so that one is left wondering who is really behind the attacks on the euro. As Aymery has concluded, there's more to this story than meets the eye, and he provides some shenanigan-free suggestions that would solve the financial crisis in a hurry, but the elite surely will not listen. After all, consider that in America they've sacrificed an entire generation of students, giving them a substandard education and a college degree that leaves them shackled in debt. Manuel García, Jr. has some remedies to this institutional illness -- and no, the answer is not eugenics, as the likes of ethologist Konrad Lorenz espoused. Michael Barker presents Part I of a study on the relation between Lorenz and this brutal movement.
Turning to culture, Jonah Raskin reviews Waights Taylor's book Our Southern Home, which is part history and part memoir on the Alabama events that shaped the civil rights movement, and Gilles d'Aymery reviews Paul Buhle's latest book Robin Hood: People's Outlaw and Forest Hero -- a timely production as the pilfering of the masses by the few continues unabated. Peter Byrne examines the differing cultural responses to the deaths of two journalists, Giorgio Bocca and Christopher Hitchens; Charles Marowitz recalls his play Artaud at Rodez, a poetic interpretation of the life of Antonin Artaud; and Raju Peddada wanders through some gems of inscriptions in his old, second-hand books, concluding that books are actually our mirrors -- they never really belong to anyone.
Finally, Jan Baughman remembers -- with an illustration and photos -- our dearly missed cat who recently left this world and all of the troubles that brought her to us, and we repost Gilles d'Aymery's moving story of Priam, another endearing creature whose presence is still sorely missed three years after he passed. As Guido Monte's multilingual poem puts it, all that exists is creature... We close with your letters on Paul Buhle and David Harvey; Swans masthead quote; the demise of the eurozone; the continuing relevance of Boris Vian's song Le déserteur, and more.
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Tidbits Flying Across the Martian Desk
Blips #121
"We should manage our fortunes as we do our health -- enjoy it when good, be patient when it is bad, and never apply violent remedies except in an extreme necessity."
Gilles d'Aymery is Swans' publisher and co-editor.
Patterns which Connect
Beggaring Student Life
A morally bankrupt society beggars its student life. Both college student loan relief and the adequate funding of K-12 public education are social justice and moral issues couched evasively as purely financial problems. They require forthright national attention -- and action. More... Manuel García, Jr. is a retired physicist, author, and family man who lives in Oakland, California.
On Konrad Lorenz (Part I of II)
Konrad Lorenz is the well-known author of numerous international bestselling books, with the most politically significant and widely known being On Aggression (Methuen, 1966). Having studied the behavioral biology of animals his entire life, Lorenz along with intellectuals like Niko Tinbergen and Sir Julian Huxley are considered to be the founding fathers of ethology -- the zoological study of animal behavior. Like many scientists of his day, Lorenz was quick to extrapolate the findings of his studies of animals to human behavior, which led him to assert that aggression served as one of the most powerful of all human instincts. More... Michael Barker is an independent researcher who lives in London, England.
Hungry Man, Reach For The Book
Haunted By Racism
Two "isms" -- racism and liberalism -- make their way through Our Southern Home, a new carefully-researched book that's part history and part memoir, and that offers a convincing argument that the political, social, and cultural events that happened in Alabama in the 20th century profoundly shaped the course of the civil rights movement in the United States and also in fact altered the shape of 20th century American history. More... Jonah Raskin is a professor emeritus in communication studies at Sonoma State University, California.
Paul Buhle's Robin Hood
When Mitt Romney, the Republican front-runner to the 2012 US presidential election, says that "[he] like[s] to fire people," or that he wants to let home foreclosures "hit the bottom"; when Sheldon Adelson, a multi-billionaire casino owner writes a $5 million check to Winning Our Future, the Newt Gingrich "super-pack" -- that's 1,000 times as much as the same Adelson could legally give directly to the Gingrich campaign, thanks to the 2010 Supreme Court decision (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission); when Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs' CEO, talks about doing the "work of god"; when the White House is staffed with Wall Street insiders (the latest being Obama's new chief of staff, Jack Lew, a former Citigroup executive); when the majority of Americans is being decimated and immiserated, its upward mobility a chimera; when... One has to ask: Where is Robin Hood to fight the cruel and greedy Sheriff of Nottingham? More... Gilles d'Aymery is Swans' publisher and co-editor.
Arts & Culture
Journalists Mourned And Bemoaned
In an unheroic moment, André Malraux defined man as a miserable little pile of secrets. Nations have their secrets too, unmentionables of the family sort. They are engraved in the tribal skull. At the top of Italy's pile is the big truth, stretching from the Alps to off-shore Africa, that, in a word, the country is not one at all. The nation is no nation in the sense that the neighboring UK, France, Germany, and Spain can be considered such. History -- as always -- explains this state of affairs, but for now let's forget explanations. More... Peter Byrne is an American-born teacher and writer who lives in Lecce, Italy.
Artaud at Rodez
My first awareness of Antonin Artaud dates from 1958. By some means, I no longer remember how, I came across The Theater and its Double. I found its tone of voice mesmerizing. I was being hectored by a sensibility that had seen something very special and very different in the theater, and the insistence of that vision, rather than its clarity, was riveting. More... Charles Marowitz is an author of over two dozen books and numerous essays and articles who lives in Southern California.
The Book: A Palimpsest Of Many Tales
The last week of every December, since 2007, has become irretrievably melancholic for me. Today, the year's second last day, is all leaden, with that drumbeat of a drizzle on the skylights, intensifying the pall. Such a gloomy setting normally induces me to look for my old books to caress. In one corner, there is this two-foot stack of sepia-toned books with understated monochromatic dust jackets that I have no intention of reading. More... Raju Peddada is an industrial designer who lives in Des Plaines, Illinois.
Remembering Loved Ones
A Little Soucie And A Lot Of Joy
"Captain Midnight! Captain Midnight!" It was an annoying French-Canadian-accented, shrill, nasally scream we heard regularly after having purchased our little house on half an acre in Menlo Park, California, that butted up to a house belonging to the Soucies -- their name fittingly meaning "trouble" in French, and soucie they were from Day 1. Not long after we moved in, they adopted Captain Midnight, a beautiful short-haired black cat, perhaps a year or two old, from a woman with 30-some cats in her home. The trouble was, at least for the Soucies, Captain Midnight did not want to live with these annoying people and their annoying little dog. More... Jan Baughman is a clinical researcher and Swans' co-editor.
Dors Petit Homme, Dors Petit Frère
Remembering Priam, an extraordinary dog and inseparable companion whose life filled our hearts, and whose death broke them. (Written in November 2009.) More... Gilles d'Aymery is Swans' publisher and co-editor.
Multilingual Poetry
Creature
and my friend paolo said Guido Monte teaches Italian and Latin literature in Palermo, Italy.
Letters to the Editor
On Paul Buhle's article on David Harvey, reading that would benefit the Occupy movement; the origin of Gilles d'Aymery's Swans masthead quote; the death of a loveable cat; the demise of the eurozone; and the continuing relevance of Boris Vian's song Le déserteur. 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.
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