PARIS JOURNAL: Tracing Roots Fostered by War, Severed by Shame

PARIS JOURNAL: Tracing Roots Fostered by War, Severed by Shame

 

PARIS — When Jacques Roquencourt handles photographs, he does so with delicate hands. An accomplished aerospace engineer, he spent his life building things like airborne radar systems. He is also one ofFrance's foremost experts on early photography, particularly the work of Daguerre.

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But when a package of photographs arrived recently from Freiburg,Germany, he handled them with special delicacy. For if investigations now under way bear fruit, one of the people in the black-and-white photos, taken in the 1930s, will prove to be the father whose identity has remained a mystery to Mr. Roquencourt for all his 67 years.

The so-called enfants de Boches — roughly, children of the Huns — born during the war to French women and German soldiers, are seeking to fill a hole in their lives, hunting for long-lost German fathers they never knew and speaking openly of the maltreatment they suffered from their French neighbors. It is estimated that 200,000 children were born of these wartime love affairs.

Photos of the time depict young women, their heads shorn in shame, being hounded through villages, clutching the children of German fathers. About 20,000 women had their heads shaved. Many rejected the children, gave them up for adoption or placed them in orphanages.

But now these children, in their late 60s, are struggling to put their lives in order while there is still time. They have formed an association and sought the help of the German and French governments to try to identify their fathers, in many cases already dead, or families that their fathers founded in Germany after the war.

In a speech last year in Berlin, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner paid tribute to the war children, the first time a French government had officially done so, calling them "the offspring of damned women and fathers whose memory has been assassinated." Sixty years after the fact, he said, "they ask for their misery, their lives, their identity to be recognized."

Mr. Roquencourt is one of them.

A tall, white-haired man with an engaging smile, he was reared in the west of France by a woman he still calls Mother. But in the 1980s, when he prepared to marry, his bride's father, a retired naval officer, asked the police for a background check on his future son-in-law. Only then did Mr. Roquencourt learn that his mother was actually an adoptive parent. His biological mother had placed him as an infant in an orphanage, where he remained until he was 5 ½, when he was adopted.

"My adoptive mother had a son, Maurice Roquencourt, who died during the war in a labor camp near Frankfurt," Mr. Roquencourt said in an interview in his home, a half-hour from Paris. "I've often thought that she took me in to replace her son."

Mr. Roquencourt tracked down family members on his biological mother's side. He got to know her son and daughter by a later marriage. "I went to the communions and marriages of their children," he said. Lately, though, the connection has weakened.

When he found his biological mother, by then in a retirement home, she refused to recognize him. "She denied that I was her child, or that she had abandoned me twice," he said, once by placing him in an orphanage and a second time by allowing him to be adopted. "She denied it. It distresses me. It's always painfully on my mind."

But when it came to finding his father, Mr. Roquencourt was stymied. From a half-brother, the son of his biological mother, who later married a Frenchman, he learned that his father had been a physician and a major in the Wehrmacht. From one of his mother's cousins, he learned that his father had been the director of a German military hospital in Cherbourg, where the German submarine fleet was based.

But that was all he could uncover until 2005, when another war child, Jeanine Nivoix-Sevestre, founded an association to bring together the enfants de Boches. Her mother was a 16-year-old waitress in a village restaurant in 1941 when she met Werner, a soldier in his 20s. Did her mother ever speak of Werner? "She was killed in a British bombing raid in 1944," she said, "when I was not yet 3."

Children fathered by the soldiers of occupying armies are by no means unique to France. But the enmity between the French and Germans after two bitter wars often turned these children's lives into hell.

After her mother's death, Mrs. Nivoix-Sevestre was placed with foster parents, then in an orphanage. When she was 13, she learned from a girlfriend — she said it seemed that everyone in her village knew about it but her — that her father was named Werner (no known last name), was probably Austrian and was most likely killed near Smolensk, Russia, in 1942 or 1943.

The association, which now has 254 members, contacted the German military archives in Berlin and Freiburg and secured their help in searching out relatives; they also received the support of Mr. Kouchner, the French foreign minister, whose grandparents perished in Auschwitz.

Then this year, the German government announced that children of German soldiers would be eligible for dual citizenship. Applications would be handled "generously," it said.

In recent months, friends of the association in Freiburg found the names of the three directors of the Cherbourg hospital during the German occupation. At the time Mr. Roquencourt was conceived, the director was Dr. Walther Biese. He was 53 when he met Mr. Roquencourt's mother, and he had a wife and two daughters in Germany.

Mr. Roquencourt is now in touch with a granddaughter of Dr. Biese. This summer, they will submit DNA samples to see whether Dr. Biese is really the father.

Mr. Roquencourt has received a copy of three evaluations of Dr. Biese made by superiors during the war, describing him as an "outstanding personality," and "calm and level-headed." Mr. Roquencourt's expression betrays satisfaction that his father, if it is Dr. Biese, was a healer, not a killer.

Mr. Roquencourt is realistic about his mother. "In the worst of cases, had I stayed with her, they would have called me 'Bastard, Hun,' " he said. Instead, he grew up comfortably, earned a degree in engineering and has a contented family life. Yet even now, he asks that the name of his village not be divulged. Has Mr. Roquencourt forgiven his mother? "It's the past, it's done, what should I do, shoot myself in the head?" he said. "You have to get on with it."

He paused, then added: "I am the type who doesn't suffer. But many do. I see that in the association."

 

By JOHN TAGLIABUE

Published: July 9, 2009

 

 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/world/europe/10france.html?_r=1&hp

 

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Sumerian .... Gods and Goddesses by Chantal Gebhardt

Sumerian .... Gods and Goddesses by Chantal Gebhardt

bustill is pleased to present guest blogger Chantal Gebhardt's article.

Information about Sumerian Gods and Goddesses is found on the Sumerian King List as well as Sumerian clay tablets and cylinder seals. The Sumerian King List records all the rulers of Earth back over 400,000 years. This huge stretch of time coupled with reigns into the thousands of years has caused most historians to reject its accuracy. However all the early rulers were allegedly gods - demi-gods or immortals.

These Gods were called the Nephilim Nefilim, Elohim, the Anunnaki - "Those who from Heaven to Earth came."

In Sumerian Mythology they were a pantheon of good and evil gods and goddesses who came to Earth to create the human race. According to the some resources, these gods came from Nibiru - 'Planet of the Crossing.' The Assyrians and Babylonians called it 'Marduk', after their chief god. Sumerians said one year on planet Nibiru, a sar, was equivalent in time to 3,600 Earth years. Anunnaki lifespans were 120 sars which is 120 x 3,600 or 432,000 years. According to the King List - 120 sars had passed from the time the Anunnaki arrived on Earth to the time of the Flood.

The Sumerian Gods Create a Biogenetic Experiment Called Humans

The AnunnakiKing's List are sometimes depicted as humanoid. At other times they are bird-headed with wings. Often they are Reptilian in appearance especially when depicted as warriors. Sometimes they are shown as a combination of several types of entities. All is myth, math, and metaphor, so look for the clues in every set of gods you read about, as they all follow the same patterns that repeat in cycles or loops called Time. The patterns of their battles reflect reality as duality and are found within every pantheon of gods - the same characters playing different roles.

A Sumerian tablet shows Enmeduranki, a prince in Sippar, who was well loved by Anu, Enlil and Ea. Shamash, a priest in the Bright Temple, appointed him then took him to the assembly of the gods. They showed him how to observe oil on water and many other secrets of Anu, Enlil and Ea. Then they gave him the Divine Tablet, the kibdu secret of Heaven and Earth. They taught him how to make calculations with numbers."

The Sumerians never called the Anunnaki, 'gods.' They were called din.gir, a two-syllable word. 'Din' meant 'righteous, pure, bright;' 'gir' was a term used to describe a sharp-edged object. As an epithet for the Anunnaki 'dingir' meant 'righteous ones of the bright pointed objects.'

Sumerian texts break up history into two epochs divided by the Great Deluge - the Biblical Flood. After the waters receded the great Anunnaki who decree the fate decided that the gods were too lofty for mankind. The term used - 'elu' in Akkadian - means exactly that: 'Lofty Ones;' from it comes the Babylonian, Assyrian, Hebrew, and Ugaritic El - the term to which the Greeks gave the connotation 'god'.

From Genesis:

After the sons of God took human wives there were giants in the Earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became the mighty men which were of old, men of renown. The Nefilim were upon the Earth, in those days and thereafter too, when the sons of the gods cohabitated with the daughters of the Adam, and they bore children unto them. They were the mighty ones of Eternity - the people of the shem.' Nefilim stems from the Semitic root NFL, 'to be cast down.'

The Sumerians believed in their gods and saw the intentions of their gods as good and powerful beings who controlled their world. The Sumerians explanation for their hardships and misfortunes were the result of human deeds that displeased the gods - in a word, sin. They believed that when someone displeased the gods, these gods let demons punish the offender with sickness, disease or environmental disasters.

The Sumerians experienced infrequent rains that sometimes created disastrous floods, and they believed that these floods were punishments created by a demon god that lived in the depths of the Gulf of Persia. And to explain the misfortunes and suffering of infants, the Sumerians believed that sin was inborn, that never was a child born without sin. Therefore, wrote a Sumerian, when one suffered it was best not to curse the gods but to glorify them, to appeal to them, and to wait patiently for their deliverance.

In giving their gods human characteristics, the Sumerians projected onto their gods the conflicts they found among themselves. Sumerian priests wrote of a dispute between the god of cattle, Lahar, and his sister Ashnan, the goddess of grain. Like some other gods, these gods were vain and wished to be praised. Each of the two sibling gods extolled his and her own achievements and belittled the achievements of the other.

The Sumerians 'saw' another dispute between the minor gods Emesh (summer) and his brother Enten (winter). Each of these brothers had specific duties in creation - like Cain the farmer and Able the herdsmen. The god Enlil put Emesh in charge of producing trees, building houses, temples, cities and other tasks. Enlil put Enten in charge of causing ewes to give birth to lambs, goats to give birth to kids, birds to build nests, fish to lay their eggs and trees to bear fruit. And the brothers quarreled violently as Emesh challenged Enten's claim to be the farmer god.

A dispute existed also between the god Enki and a mother goddess, Ninhursag -- perhaps originally the earth goddess Ki. Ninhursag made eight plants sprout in a divine garden, plants created from three generations of goddesses fathered by Enki.

These goddesses were described as having been born "without pain or travail." Then trouble came as Enki ate the plants that Ninhursag had grown. Ninhursag responded with rage, and she pronounced a curse of death on Enki, and Enki's health began to fail. Eight parts of Enki's body - one for each of the eight plants that he ate - became diseased, one of which was his rib.

The goddess Ninhursag then disappeared so as not let sympathy for Enki change her mind about her sentence of death upon him. But she finally relented and returned to heal Enki. She created eight healing deities - eight more goddesses - one for each of Enki's ailing body parts. The goddess who healed Enki's rib was Nin-ti, a name that in Sumerian meant "lady of the rib," which describes a character who was to appear in a different role in Hebrew writings centuries later, a character to be called Eve.

The Four Primary Gods

An - Anu

In Sumerian mythology and later for Assyrians and Babylonians, Anu was a sky-god, the god of heaven, lord of constellations, king of gods, spirits and demons, and dwelt in the highest heavenly regions. It was believed that he had the power to judge those who had committed crimes, and that he had created the stars as soldiers to destroy the wicked. He was the father of the Anunnaku (also spelled Anunnaki). In art he was sometimes depicted as a jackal. His attribute was the royal tiara, most times decorated with two pairs of bull horns.

He was also called An.

In Sumerian mythology, An was the god whose name was synonymous with the sun's zenith, or heaven. He was the oldest god in the Sumerian pantheon, and part of a triad including Enlil, god of the sky and Enki, god of water. He was called Anu by the Akkadians, rulers of Mesopotamia after the conquest of Sumer in 2334 BCE by King Sargon of Akkad.

In Sumerian mythology and later for Assyrians and Babylonians, Anu was a sky-god, the god of heaven, lord of constellations, king of gods, spirits and demons, and dwelt in the highest heavenly regions. It was believed that he had the power to judge those who had committed crimes, and that he had created the stars as soldiers to destroy the wicked. He was the father of the Anunnaku (also spelled Anunnaki). In art he was sometimes depicted as a jackal. His attribute was the royal tiara, most times decorated with two pairs of bull horns.

By virtue of being the first figure in a triad consisting of Anu, Bel and Ea, Anu came to be regarded as the father and king of the gods. Anu is so prominently associated with the city of Erech in southern Babylonia that there are good reasons for believing this place to have been the original seat of the Anu cult. If this be correct, then the goddess Nana (or Ishtar) of Erech was presumably regarded as his consort.

The name of the god signifies the "high one" and he was probably a god of the atmospheric region above the earth--perhaps a storm god like Adad. However this may be, already in the old-Babylonian period, i.e. before Khammurabi, Anu was regarded as the god of the heavens and his name became in fact synonymous with the heavens, so that in some cases it is doubtful whether, under the term, the god or the heavens is meant.

It would seem from this that the grouping of the divine powers recognized in the universe into a triad symbolizing the three divisions, heavens, earth and the watery-deep, was a process of thought which had taken place before the third millennium.

To Anu was assigned the control of the heavens, to Bel the earth, and to Ea the waters.

The doctrine once established remained an inherent part of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion and led to the more or less complete disassociation of the three gods constituting the triad from their original local limitations.

An intermediate step between Anu viewed as the local deity of Erech (or some other centre), Bel as the god of Nippur, and Ea as the god of Eridu is represented by the prominence which each one of the centers associated with the three deities in question must have acquired, and which led to each one absorbing the qualities of other gods so as to give them a controlling position in an organized pantheon.

For Nippur we have the direct evidence that its chief deity, En-lil or Bel, was once regarded as the head of an extensive pantheon. The sanctity and, therefore, the importance of Eridu remained a fixed tradition in the minds of the people to the latest days, and analogy therefore justifies the conclusion that Anu was likewise worshipped in a centre which had acquired great prominence.

The summing-up of divine powers manifested in the universe in a threefold division represents an outcome of speculation in the schools attached to the temples of Babylonia, but the selection of Anu, Bel and Ea for the three representatives of the three spheres recognized, is due to the importance which, for one reason or the other, the centers in which Anu, Bel and Ea were worshipped had acquired in the popular mind.

Each of the three must have been regarded in his centre as the most important member in a larger or smaller group, so that their union in a triad marks also the combination of the three distinctive pantheons into a harmonious whole. In the astral theology of Babylonia and Assyria, Anu, Bel and Ea became the three zones of the ecliptic, the northern, middle and southern zone respectively.

The purely theoretical character of Anu is thus still further emphasized, and in the annals and votive inscriptions as well as in the incantations and hymns, he is rarely introduced as an active force to whom a personal appeal can be made. His name becomes little more than a synonym for the heavens in general and even his title as king or father of the gods has little of the personal element in it.

A consort Antum (or as some scholars prefer to read, Anatum) is assigned to him, on the theory that every deity must have a female associate, but Antum is a purely artificial product--a lifeless symbol playing even less of a part in what may be called the active pantheon than Anu.

In Hurrian mythology, Anu was the progenitor of all gods. His son Kumarbi bit off his genitals and spat out three deities, one of whom, Teshub, later deposed Kumarbi. He bit off the genitals of Anu and spat out three new gods. One of those, the storm god Teshub, later deposed Kumarbi. Scholars have pointed to the remarkable similarities between this Hurrian creation myth and the story of Ouranos, Kronos, and Zeus from Greek mythology. It's all recycled in the loops of time with the same characters playing most of the roles - or one character playing them all.

According to the Earth Chronicles series by Zecharia Sitchin, the wife of Anu was a fertility goddess and the mother of the gods; her cult was centered in Munster. However, Anu was one of the Anunnaki who came from the planet Nibiru (Marduk).

According to Sitchin's theories on Sumerian legend and lore, the Anunnaki arrived first on Earth probably 400,000 years ago, looking for minerals, especially gold, which they found and mined gold in Africa. Sitchin may have confused the Mesopotamian god Anu with the Irish goddess Anann - or are they the same name ?

Ninhursag- Ki

Frieze with Lion-Headed Eagle (Ninhursag) and Stags, copper, Temple at Tell al-Ubaid, 2500 BCE, h: 1.07 from the Early Dynastic - Southern Mesopotamian Period, 2900 BCE - 2350 BCE - Found in Ubaid. This copper frieze was found in the temple at Ubaid, presumably to be placed over the doorway. It represents the storm-god Ninhursag (lady of the mountain), shown as a lion-headed eagle grasping two stags with her great talons. The panel has been cast in high relief, with the heads of the three beasts cast separately. Note that the head of the eagle breaks out of the border of the frieze.

In Sumerian mythology, Ninhursag (or Ki) was the earth and mother-goddess she usually appears as the sister of Enlil. Ninhursag means 'Lady of the Foothills'. She had many other names: Nintur 'Lady Birth', Ninmah 'Lady August', Dingirmah, Aruru, and as wife of Enki was usually called Damgalnunna.

In Akkadian she was Belit-ili 'Lady of the Gods' and Mama and as wife to Ea, Enki's Akkadian counterpart, she was called Damkina. Her prestige decreased as Ishtar's increased, but her aspect as Damkina mother of Marduk, the supreme god of Babylonia, still held a secure place in the pantheon.

In union with Enki she also bore Ninsar, goddess of the pasture. She was the chief nurse, the one in charge of medical facilities. In that role that the Goddess was called NINTI (lady-life). She was considered the Mother Goddess. She was nicknamed 'Mammu' - now called 'mother' 'mom'.

Ninhursag bore a male child to Enlil. His name was NIN.UR.TA (lord who completes the fountain). He was the son who to do battle for his father using bolts of lightening.

In Egypt she played the roles of several creational goddesses - Isis, Maat and H

Enki

The Sumerian biogenetic experiment begins.

Watering the Tree of Life - Creating a Bloodline

who is readily identifiable by his two faces looking in opposite directions (duality).

The Lion's tail/tale - Age of Leo.

Enki stands with the Gods and the Initiate

Water of Life flowing into the laboratory glassware indicates alchemical circulations.

The creation of the first human

Laboratory vessels symbolize the bloodline and the Tree of Life.

Handing the water/liquid/blood of life

to a bio-genetically engineered human. Humans are a hybrid species.

Duality - Yin Yang

Male-female separation of Twin Soul Aspects - Reunion in 2012

Enki's emblem was two serpents [twin human DNA] entwined on a staff - the basis for the winged caduceus symbol used by modern Western medicine and the rod of Hermes. Enki's sacred number is 40. He was the leader of the first sons of Anu who came down to Earth, playing a pivotal role in saving humanity from the Deluge. He defied the Anunnaki ruling council and told Ziusudra (the Sumerian Noah) how to build a ship on which to save humanity from the blood. Ea would have been over 120 sars old at that time, yet his activity with humanity continued to be actively reported for thousands of years thereafter.

Enki's youngest son, Ningizzida, was Lord of the Tree of Truth, in Mesopotamia. He played the role of Thoth in Egypt. The ancient Mystery School Teachings of Thoth were past down to his Initiates who became the priests. They hid the secret knowledge of creation, passing it down through the ages until the experiment was to end. Enki was the deity of water, intelligence and creation. The main temple of Enki was the so-called é-engur-ra, the "house of the water-deep" in Eridu, which was in the wetlands of the Euphrates valley at some distance from the Persian Gulf. This takes us to the Cradle of Civilization.

Kundalini

Caduceus Rod of Hermes, DNA

Alchemy

Lyra of Hermes

Using the Rod to Slay the Dragon

Omega Project, Ending the Human DNA Experiment, Leo, Lion

Ouroboros -- 2012

Enki was a deity in Sumerian mythology, later known as Ea in Babylonian mythology. The name Ea is of Sumerian origin and was written by means of two signs signifying "house" and "water". Enki was the deity of water, intelligence and creation. The main temple of Enki was the so-called é-engur-ra, the "house of the (water-)deep"; it was in Eridu, which was in the wetlands of the Euphrates valley at some distance from the Persian Gulf. He was the keeper of the holy powers called Me. The exact meaning of his name is not sure: the common translation is "Lord of the Earth": the Sumerian en is translated as "lord", ki as "earth"; but there are theories that ki in this name has another origin.He is the lord of the Apsu, the watery abyss. His name is possibly an epithet bestowed on him for the creation of the first man, [Adamu or Adapa. His symbols included a goat and a fish, which later combined into a single beast, the Capricorn, which became one of the signs of the zodiac. Enki had a penchant for beer and a string of incestuous affairs. First, he and his consort Ninhursag had a daughter Ninsar. He then had intercourse with Ninsar who gave birth to Ninkurra. Finally, he had intercourse with Ninkurra, who gave birth to Uttu.

According to Sumerian mythology, Enki allowed humanity to survive the Deluge designed to kill them. After Enlil, An and the rest of the apparent Council of Deities, decided that Man would suffer total annihilation, he covertly rescued the human man Ziusudra by either instructing him to build some kind of an boat for his family, or by bringing him into the heavens in a magic boat. This is apparently the oldest surviving source of the Noah's Ark myth and other parallel Middle Eastern Deluge myths.

Enki was considered a god of life and replenishment, and was often depicted with streams of water emanating from his shoulders. Alongside him were trees symbolizing the male and female aspects of nature, each holding the male and female aspects of the 'Life Essence', which he, as apparent alchemist of the gods, would masterfully mix to create several beings that would live upon the face of the Earth.

Eridu, meaning "the good city", was one of the oldest settlements in the Euphrates valley, and is now represented by the mounds known as Abu Shahrein. In the absence of excavations on that site, we are dependent for our knowledge of Ea on material found elsewhere. This is, however, sufficient to enable us to state definitely that Ea was a water-deity, lord especially of the water under the earth, the Apsu. Whether Ea (or A-e as some scholars prefer) represents the real pronunciation of his name we do not know.

Older accounts sometimes suppose that by reason of the constant accumulation of soil in the Euphrates valley Eridu was formerly situated on the Persian Gulf itself (as indicated by mention in Sumerian texts of its being on the Apsu), but it is now known that the opposite is true, that the waters of the Persian Gulf have been eroding the land and that the Apsu must refer to the fresh water of the marshes surrounding the city.

Ea is figured as a man covered with the body of a fish, and this representation, as likewise the name of his temple E-apsu, "house of the watery deep", points decidedly to his character as a god of the waters. Of his cult at Eridu, which goes back to the oldest period of Babylonian history, nothing definite is known except that his temple was named Esaggila = "the lofty house", pointing to a staged tower (as with the temple of Enlil at Nippur, which was known as Ekur = "mountain house"), and that incantations, involving ceremonial rites, in which water as a sacred element played a prominent part, formed a feature of his worship.

Whether Eridu at one time also played an important political role is not certain, though not improbable. At all events, the prominence of the Ea cult led, as in the case of Nippur, to the survival of Eridu as a sacred city, long after it had ceased to have any significance as a political center. Myths in which Ea figures prominently have been found in Assurbanipal's library, indicating that Ea was regarded as the protector and teacher of mankind. He is essentially a god of civilization, and it was natural that he was also looked upon as the creator of man, and of the world in general.

Traces of this view appear in the Marduk epic celebrating the achievements of this god, and the close connection between the Ea cult at Eridu and that of Marduk also follows from two considerations:

the name of Marduk's sanctuary at Babylon bears the same name, Esaggila, as that of Ea in Eridu

Marduk is generally termed the son of Ea, who derives his powers from the voluntary abdication of the father in favor of his son.

Accordingly, the incantations originally composed for the Ea cult were re-edited by the priests of Babylon and adapted to the worship of Marduk, and, similarly, the hymns to Marduk betray traces of the transfer of attributes to Marduk which originally belonged to Ea.

It is, however, more particularly as the third figure in the triad, the two other members of which were Anu and Enlil, that Ea acquires his permanent place in the pantheon. To him was assigned the control of the watery element, and in this capacity he becomes the shar apsi, i.e. king of the Apsu or "the deep." The Apsu was figured as the abyss of water beneath the earth, and since the gathering place of the dead, known as Aralu, was situated near the confines of the Apsu, he was also designated as En-Ki, i.e. "lord of that which is below", in contrast to Anu, who was the lord of the "above" or the heavens.

The cult of Ea extended throughout Babylonia and Assyria. We find temples and shrines erected in his honor, e.g. at Nippur, Girsu, Ur, Babylon, Sippar and Nineveh, and the numerous epithets given to him, as well as the various forms under which the god appears, alike bear witness to the popularity which he enjoyed from the earliest to the latest period of Babylonian-Assyrian history.

The consort of Ea, known as Damkina, "lady of that which is below," or Damgalnunna, "great lady of the waters," represents a pale reflection of Ea and plays a part merely in association with her lord.

Enlil

Enlil was the name of a chief deity in Babylonian religion, perhaps pronounced and sometimes rendered in translations as Ellil in later Akkadian. The name is Sumerian and has been believed to mean 'Lord Wind' though a more literal interpretation is 'Lord of the Command'.

Enlil was the god of wind, or the sky between earth and heaven. One story has him originate as the exhausted breath of An (God of the heavens) and Ki (goddess of the Earth) after sexual union. Another accounts is that he and his sister Ninhursag/Ninmah/Aruru were children of an obscure god Enki 'Lord Earth' (not the famous Enki) by Ninki 'Lady Earth'.

When Enlil was a young god, he was banished from Dilmun, home of the gods, to Kur, the underworld for raping a young girl named Ninlil. Ninlil followed him to the underworld where she bore his first child, the moon god Sin. After fathering three more underworld deities, Enlil was allowed to return to Dilmun.

Enlil was also known as the inventor of the pickaxe/hoe (favorite tool of the Sumerians) and the cause of plants growing. He was in possession of the holy Me, until he gave them to Enki for safe keeping, who summarily lost them to Inanna in a drunken stupor.

Enlil's relation to An 'Sky', in theory the supreme god of the Sumerian pantheon, was somewhat like that of a Frankish mayor of the palace compared to the king, or that of a Japanese shogun compared to the emperor, or to a prime minister in a modern constitutional monarchy compared to the supposed monarch. While An was in name ruler in the highest heavens, it was Enlil who mostly did the actual ruling over the world.

By his wife Ninlil or Sud, Enlil was father of the moon god Nanna (in Akkadian Sin) and of Ninurta (also called Ningirsu). Enlil is sometimes father of Nergal, of Nisaba the goddess of grain, of Pabilsag who is sometimes equated with Ninurta, and sometimes of Enbilulu. By Ereshkigal Enlil was father of Namtar.

Enlil is associated with the ancient city of Nippur, and since Enlu with the determinative for "land" or "district" is a common method of writing the name of the city, it follows, apart from other evidence, that Enlil was originally the patron deity of Nippur.

At a very early period - prior to 3000 BC - Nippur had become the centre of a political district of considerable extent. Inscriptions found at Nippur, where extensive excavations were carried on during 1888-1900 by Messrs Peters and Haynes, under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, show that Enlil was the head of an extensive pantheon. Among the titles accorded to him are "king of lands," "king of heaven and earth" and "father of the gods".

His chief temple at Nippur was known as Ekur, signifying 'House of the mountain', and such was the sanctity acquired by this edifice that Babylonian and Assyrian rulers, down to the latest days, vied with one another in embellishing and restoring Enlil's seat of worship, and the name Ekur became the designation of a temple in general.

Grouped around the main sanctuary, there arose temples and chapels to the gods and goddesses who formed his court, so that Ekur became the name for an entire sacred precinct in the city of Nippur.

The name "mountain house" suggests a lofty structure and was perhaps the designation originally of the staged tower at Nippur, built in imitation of a mountain, with the sacred shrine of the god on the top.

When, with the political rise of Babylon as the centre of a great empire, Nippur yielded its prerogatives to the city over which Marduk presided, the attributes and the titles of Enlil were largely transferred to Marduk.

But Enlil did not, however, entirely lose his right to have any considerable political importance, while in addition the doctrine of a triad of gods symbolizing the three divisions - heavens, earth and water - assured to Enlil, to whom the earth was assigned as his province, his place in the religious system.

It was no doubt in part Enlil's position as the second figure of the triad that enabled him to survive the political eclipse of Nippur and made his sanctuary a place of pilgrimage to which Assyrian kings down to the days of Assur-bani-pal paid their homage equally with Babylonian rulers.

The Sumerian ideogram for Enlil or Ellil was formerly incorrectly read as Bel by scholars, but in fact Enlil was not especially given the title Bel 'Lord' more than many other gods.

The Babylonian god Marduk is mostly the god persistently called Bel in late Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions and it is Marduk that mostly appears in Greek and Latin texts as Belos or Belus. References in older literature to Enlil as the old Bel and Marduk as the young Bel derive from this error in reading.

Chantal Gebhardt

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Democracy In Iran

Democracy In Iran

Democracy In Iran~~

 
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Canadian Chefs Serve Seal, With a Side of Controversy

Canadian Chefs Serve Seal, With a Side of Controversy




ONE evening last week, almost every seat was occupied at Au Cinquième Péché, a bistro in the bustling neighborhood called the Plateau. And almost every table was sampling an appetizer plate that included a specialty of the restaurant's French-born chef, Benoît Lenglet: a seared, rare loin, dark red in color, with a texture and taste akin to beef tenderloin. But the meat was not beef. It was seal.

Across town, at Les Îles en Ville, Andrée Garcia, an owner and chef, has elevated seal from an occasional specialty to a regular feature. The most frequent preparation there, Ms. Garcia said, is a filet-mignon-style cut of seal that is pan-seared, then roasted briefly in the oven and finished with a cranberry sauce. She has noticed a pattern among the customers who order it: many are tourists from France. "The French are against seal hunting," Ms. Garcia said, "but when they come here, they want to eat it."

Denis Painchaud has served seal dishes since he opened Auberge Chez Denis à François in Hâvre-Aubert, Quebec, 20 years ago, but he has learned patrons prefer it as an appetizer rather than a main course. His seal starter is marinated in wine, spices and herbs, and is served with caramelized onions. "I would say 90 percent of the people like it very much," Mr. Painchaud said. "It's very, very seldom when someone says, 'I don't like it at all.' "

The handful of restaurants in Canada that serve seal received an unexpected boost last month, when theEuropean Union banned imports of commercially caught Canadian seal products after a two-year debate that threatened to erupt into a trade war.

Just days after the ban, Canada's governor general, Michaëlle Jean, who as a representative of Queen Elizabeth II acts as the ceremonial head of state, nibbled on a piece of raw seal heart during a visit to an Inuit community feast in Rankin Inlet, in the far northern territory of Nunavut. Governor General Jean's widely publicized snack seemed a direct retort to the European Union, an impression she did not try to dispel.

"Take from that what you will," she said, when asked if she was sending a message to Europe.

The episode, which prompted extensive news media coverage in Canada, also cast a spotlight on seal-serving chefs like Mr. Lenglet.

With the attention has come an increase in orders for Mr. Lenglet's seal dishes, but also death threats, in the form of e-mail messages from Europe, where seal hunting protests have been most intense. Mr. Lenglet said he was not surprised. "In the polemic, there are always people who are for and against something," he said.

He continued: "It's only a few messages. I am not afraid." His brother, Benjamin, the restaurant's manager, added, "They don't break the windows or steal the flowers or burn his car."

Other Canadian chefs and merchants appear divided over whether seal deserves a place on the table.

Martin Picard, the chef at Au Pied de Cochon in Montreal, who is known for featuring audacious dishes like bison tongue croquettes, has so far stayed away from seal.

"It is a little controversial," said Gaëlle Cerf, the restaurant's manager. But if enough customers request it, "perhaps we will have to offer it," Ms. Cerf said.

Gilles Gourdet, a veteran chef and instructor at Le Cordon Bleu in Ottawa, a branch of the French cooking school, said, "I have never had occasion to cook it, but why not?"

Despite the European ban, Mr. Gourdet, a native of France, said he was curious to know more about seal cuisine. "We have to learn again," he said. "The more you know, the more you can create the dish."

Canada allows two distinct hunts each year: a small one by Inuits in the Arctic, mainly a subsistence hunt for food, and the much larger Gulf of St. Lawrence hunt on the Atlantic coast, driven primarily by the fur trade.

In the latter hunt, which has been the focus of protests by animal rights groups, fishermen are allowed to kill 280,000 seals out of a herd that Canadian officials estimate at 5.6 million. About 15,800 Canadians hold seal hunting licenses.

"This activity is part of the way of life of thousands of people in our country," Governor General Jean said after her visit to northern Canada. And she was not just referring to Inuit traditions; she was also defending the commercial seal hunts. Besides Canada, the only countries still conducting commercial hunts are Norway, Greenland and Namibia, according to the Humane Society International, Canada. The United States banned commercial seal hunting in 1972, according to the society.

Christian Archambault, a second-generation fishmonger at the Atwater Market in Montreal, flatly refuses to stock seal, but he acknowledged a distinction between urban diners simply exploring a new trend and Inuits following a tradition. "They have a right to eat it locally," Mr. Archambault said.

The Canadian humane society also does not oppose the small hunt in the far north. Its main objection to seal dishes in restaurants, it says, is that the cuisine deflects attention from the bigger hunt, which the society has been working to end. "If they're selling meat, they're promoting the commercial seal hunt," said Rebecca Aldworth, director of the society in Canada. "The restaurants aren't the story here. The seal hunt is the story."

Ms. Aldworth added: "If the restaurants believe the hunt should end, they should not be serving seal meat. Most countries are taking steps to end the hunt, not promote it."

The big gulf hunt is the supply source for restaurants like Au Cinquième Péché. Mr. Lenglet, the chef, began experimenting with seal after a sous-chef applicant brought him a piece of meat from his native Magdalen Islands in far eastern Quebec, a major center of the commercial seal hunt. "We don't have it, so I did not know it," Mr. Lenglet said.

He has since taken a deep, almost protective interest in the way seal reaches his restaurant, traveling to the islands to meet the hunters, and visiting the abattoir where the meat is butchered. Mr. Lenglet also sought out local purveyors who could smoke the meat.

"I could eat a steak of seal," Mr. Lenglet said. "Anyone who likes red meat or game will like it."

Peter Ross of Montreal, who brought his mother, Mary Lynn, to the restaurant last week, said he had no qualms about trying seal. "It's no worse than veal," Mr. Ross said. Mrs. Ross, of North Hatley, Quebec, added, "I'll try anything once."

They sampled the loin, as well as seal pepperoni, a slim, dry sausage with the same flavor as pizza-parlor pepperoni, and smoked seal, an homage to Montreal's tradition of thinly sliced smoked meats like brisket. The smoked seal had an almost grainy feel on the tongue and an intense flavor.

Another of Mr. Lenglet's dishes, seal tartare, is not on the menu, but was offered to this reporter. In it, he mixed raw seal with seaweed, stacked it atop a potato pancake and paired the tartare with a smoked herring mousse. It had the strongest taste of all the dishes, both gamy and fishy, with the consistency of shredded pork.

At Ms. Garcia's restaurant across town in the southwest neighborhood of Verdun, the menu includes seal pâté and sausage, in addition to the cranberry-sauced filet.

Neither Mr. Lenglet nor Ms. Garcia serve the seal heart sampled by Governor General Jean, although both have received requests for it. Mr. Lenglet also insisted that he serves only meat from older animals, not baby seal, which cannot legally be hunted.

His diner, Mrs. Ross, appeared relieved to hear that, although she was not enthusiastic about her seal experience. "I didn't like the fishy taste," she said. Her son, however, said he was eager to have it again, although diners will have to hurry. Mr. Lenglet said there was one month left in the seal-producing season; after July, he would not be able to obtain it again until spring, when he vows it will return.

Mr. Ross had this advice: "If you see seal on a menu, try it."

Ian Austen contributed reporting from Ottawa.

 

 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/dining/01seal.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

 

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The Day Facebook Changed: Messages to Become Public by Default

The Day Facebook Changed: Messages to Become Public by Default

 

 

 

One of the most anticipated days in the history of social networking site Facebook has finally come: the company announced today that it has begun making status messages, photos and videos visible to the public at large by default instead of being visible only to a user's approved friends.

 

Private by default has been a hallmark characteristic of Facebook, as high on the list as the lack of MySpace garishness. It's been key in making Facebook the biggest social network on earth. Now that's about to change. Facebook has been very careful to avoid the major backlash that it has seen in the past when making substantial changes to things like privacy settings, but it's hard to imagine there isn't going to be a backlash. From a web innovation perspective, the move could lead to some of the most exciting developments we've seen yet from the world of social media.

Remember the News Feed?

When Facebook launched its News Feed feature in September 2006, displaying all activity by a user's friends in a flowing list of updates on the page, the backlash shook the young service to its core. The News Feed is now the central feature of the Facebook user experience. The new public visibility of shared messages is going to change Facebook on that kind of scale.

Remember Beacon?

When Facebook launched its off-site advertising initiative called Beacon, users were seeing things like the purchase of a surprise engagement ring on Overstock.com exposed to a would-be wife on Facebook because people didn't understand how to deal with the new integration of 3rd party sites. The backlash was so big that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had to try and calm Barbara Walters down about it on national television. Beacon didn't disappear but was reformed in a more palatable way. The backlash against public default visibility is going to resemble the Beacon backlash, if not dwarf it.

Facebook Naked

And now we're at today. By default, all your messages on Facebook will soon be naked visible to the world. The company is starting by rolling out the feature to people who had already set their profiles as public, but it will come to everyone soon. You'll be able each time you publish a message to change that message's privacy setting and from that drop down there's a link to change your default setting.

But most people will not change the setting. Facebook messages are about to be publicly visible. A whole lot of people are going to hate it. When ex-lovers, bosses, moms, stalkers, cops, creeps and others find out what people have been posting on Facebook - the reprimand that "well, you could have changed your default setting" is not going to sit well with people.

Robots FTW

The soft fleshed creatures that we Facebook users are will likely hate the new setting, at least at first. But robots are going to love it. As the largest social network on the web, with an incredible amount of time spent on the site by its users, Facebook holds a giant reservoir of demographic and sentiment data. It is the mother lode - and it's been inaccessible so far because everything has been private so far.

This winter there was a lot of discussion of a rumored "Facebook Sentiment Engine"believed to be in the works. We wrote about what could be both best case and worst case scenarios for the opening of Facebook user data to outside analysis.

Best Case

Think of the non-commercial, public interest kind of data that could be acquired. When the economic stimulus plan of 2009 was first announced on national television - what was the reaction of people in their mid twenties who lived in the Mid West of the US? Was that collective reaction substantially different from the reaction of self-identified queer people of color living in the North East US? How did the public reaction to the proposed plan change one hour, one day or one week after the announcement? This is all very interesting and potentially valuable data that could be, for the first time in history, available in near real time. Just by listening to what people are talking about in status updates and comments.

Worst Case

The worst case scenario is that Facebook will not open a free message search API for outside developers, instead it will make bulk access and analysis of all these public messages available only to commercial firms able to pay in order to harvest the data for marketing purposes. That seems pretty likely, unfortunately.

It's notable that there is not yet an option to search publicly shared content, as in full text search of messages, on the Facebook search page. It may not be searchable at all, except through very specific and possibly paid access granted by Facebook - even though it's all visible to the human eye. As Fred Vogelstein wrote in a long post on Wired.com this week:

By Facebook's estimates, every month users share 4 billion pieces of information--news stories, status updates, birthday wishes, and so on. They also upload 850 million photos and 8 million videos. But anyone wanting to access that stuff must go through Facebook; the social network treats it all as proprietary data, largely shielding it from Google's crawlers. Except for the mostly cursory information that users choose to make public, what happens on Facebook's servers stays on Facebook's servers. That represents a massive and fast-growing blind spot for Google, whose long-stated goal is to "organize the world's information."

Comparisons to Twitter search are only useful in talking about theories of value, in terms of actual value an open Facebook search would leave tiny Twitter in the dust.

So there are two ways this could go. Free programatic analysis to the publicly shared information from Facebook users could be like a high-speed, real-time Library of Congress for all the robots in the Republic. Or it could be limited access, like the high-priced market research reports bought and sold by marketing firms about other pools of public sentiment today.

We know which scenario we're cheering for.

We also feel pretty sure how most Facebook users are going to feel about this fundamental change. They are going to hate it like most residents of the Wild West must have hated the first US Census agents.

In time, though, people may very well decide they are comfortable with their social networking being public by default. That will be a different world, and today will have been one of the most important days in that new world's unfolding.

 

By MARSHALL KIRKPATRICK of ReadWriteWeb

Published: June 24, 2009

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/06/24/24readwriteweb-the-day-facebook-changed-messages-to-become-18772.html?em

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How the Food Makers Captured Our Brains

How the Food Makers Captured Our Brains

As head of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. David A. Kesslerserved two presidents and battled Congress and Big Tobacco. But the Harvard-educated pediatrician discovered he was helpless against the forces of a chocolate chip cookie.

In an experiment of one, Dr. Kessler tested his willpower by buying two gooey chocolate chip cookies that he didn't plan to eat. At home, he found himself staring at the cookies, and even distracted by memories of the chocolate chunks and doughy peaks as he left the room. He left the house, and the cookies remained uneaten. Feeling triumphant, he stopped for coffee, saw cookies on the counter and gobbled one down.

"Why does that chocolate chip cookie have such power over me?" Dr. Kessler asked in an interview. "Is it the cookie, the representation of the cookie in my brain? I spent seven years trying to figure out the answer."

The result of Dr. Kessler's quest is a fascinating new book, "The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite" (Rodale).

During his time at the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Kessler maintained a high profile, streamlining the agency, pushing for faster approval of drugs and overseeing the creation of the standardized nutrition label on food packaging. But Dr. Kessler is perhaps best known for his efforts to investigate and regulate the tobacco industry, and his accusation that cigarette makers intentionally manipulated nicotine content to make their products more addictive.

In "The End of Overeating," Dr. Kessler finds some similarities in the food industry, which has combined and created foods in a way that taps into our brain circuitry and stimulates our desire for more.

When it comes to stimulating our brains, Dr. Kessler noted, individual ingredients aren't particularly potent. But by combining fats, sugar and salt in innumerable ways, food makers have essentially tapped into the brain's reward system, creating a feedback loop that stimulates our desire to eat and leaves us wanting more and more even when we're full.

Dr. Kessler isn't convinced that food makers fully understand the neuroscience of the forces they have unleashed, but food companies certainly understand human behavior, taste preferences and desire. In fact, he offers descriptions of how restaurants and food makers manipulate ingredients to reach the aptly named "bliss point." Foods that contain too little or too much sugar, fat or salt are either bland or overwhelming. But food scientists work hard to reach the precise point at which we derive the greatest pleasure from fat, sugar and salt.

The result is that chain restaurants like Chili's cook up "hyper-palatable food that requires little chewing and goes down easily," he notes. And Dr. Kessler reports that the Snickers bar, for instance, is "extraordinarily well engineered." As we chew it, the sugar dissolves, the fat melts and the caramel traps the peanuts so the entire combination of flavors is blissfully experienced in the mouth at the same time.

Foods rich in sugar and fat are relatively recent arrivals on the food landscape, Dr. Kessler noted. But today, foods are more than just a combination of ingredients. They are highly complex creations, loaded up with layer upon layer of stimulating tastes that result in a multisensory experience for the brain. Food companies "design food for irresistibility," Dr. Kessler noted. "It's been part of their business plans."

But this book is less an exposé about the food industry and more an exploration of us. "My real goal is, How do you explain to people what's going on with them?" Dr. Kessler said. "Nobody has ever explained to people how their brains have been captured."

The book, a New York Times best seller, includes Dr. Kessler's own candid admission that he struggles with overeating.

"I wouldn't have been as interested in the question of why we can't resist food if I didn't have it myself," he said. "I gained and lost my body weight several times over. I have suits in every size."

This is not a diet book, but Dr. Kessler devotes a sizable section to "food rehab," offering practical advice for using the science of overeating to our advantage, so that we begin to think differently about food and take back control of our eating habits.

One of his main messages is that overeating is not due to an absence of willpower, but a biological challenge made more difficult by the overstimulating food environment that surrounds us. "Conditioned hypereating" is a chronic problem that is made worse by dieting and needs to be managed rather than cured, he said. And while lapses are inevitable, Dr. Kessler outlines several strategies that address the behavioral, cognitive and nutritional factors that fuel overeating.

Planned and structured eating and understanding your personal food triggers are essential. In addition, educating yourself about food can help alter your perceptions about what types of food are desirable. Just as many of us now find cigarettes repulsive, Dr. Kessler argues that we can also undergo similar "perceptual shifts" about large portion sizes and processed foods. For instance, he notes that when people who once loved to eat steak become vegetarians, they typically begin to view animal protein as disgusting.

The advice is certainly not a quick fix or a guarantee, but Dr. Kessler said that educating himself in the course of writing the book had helped him gain control over his eating.

"For the first time in my life, I can keep my weight relatively stable," he said. "Now, if you stress me and fatigue me and put me in an airport and the plane is seven hours late — I'm still going to grab those chocolate-covered pretzels. The old circuitry will still show its head."

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Published: June 22, 2009

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Retweeting: 'Followers' look to 'leaders' as social networks grow

Retweeting: 'Followers' look to 'leaders' as social networks grow

 

• "Retweeting," or passing along someone else's Twitter tweet, can help spread news
• Motivations behind retweeting include info, ego, identity and amusement
• In person, people recommend restaurants to each other, as they do on Twitter
• The label "followers" on Twitter makes users feel like "leaders"

 

 

 

An avid Twitter user, Alana Taylor wrote a song about the social networking site and uploaded it to YouTube last April. Soon, her Twitter feed became flooded with messages linking to it.

"'Everyone was like, 'RT: Alana Taylor's Twitter song,' " said Taylor, 21, a student at New York University and marketing manager at OneTXT. "It just spread, and a lot of it had to do with retweeting."

Retweeting, represented on Twitter with the symbol "RT," means a user has taken someone else's tweet -- or message -- and copied part or all of it. The original author is often credited through the convention "@username," although sometimes the true source gets lost as messages spread further.

Apart from being used to share amusing links such as Taylor's video, retweeting has taken on a powerful role in political activism. Many young protesters in Iran have used Twitter to organize demonstrations against the results of the recent election, and the words, photos and videos of people on the ground in the country have spread globally through retweeting.

A video of a dying woman in Iran, known only as "Neda," has been shared and mentioned so much in tweets and retweets that the name has been a "trending topic" on Twitter since Saturday.

One frequent user who has retweeted videos from Iran is Kyle Aevermann, 22, from Itasca, Illinois. Generally the retweets he receives in his feed can be humorous or even "bizarre," but lately there's been a lot of news, especially regarding Iran, he said.

"Sometimes it's a good way to just get information out since not everyone is following the same people, so it kind of, like, expands who you're following in some ways," Aevermann said.

 

 

Tips for Retweeting

1. Begin with the letters RT. Don't waste valuable characters (you've only got 140) with preambles such as "Retweet."

 

2. Give credit to the source of the tweet by using @author, where "author" is the Twitter username of the person you are referencing. Sometimes there will be multiple names attached because it's been passed along so many times; make sure you are keeping the original source if you trim the chain of users.

 

3. When linking to something, shorten the URL you are referencing through a tool such as http://ow.ly orhttp://is.gd.

 

4. Use the remaining characters to explain the point of view or the link in the original tweet, preserving the spirit of what the source said.

 

5. Think twice before retweeting sensitive material or information that may be untrue. You don't want to embarrass people or spread lies.

 

6. Think about whether what you retweet will have relevance to any of your followers before posting. And avoid spam -- it's all over the Web.

Retweets about Iran are a prime example of how the act of passing on someone else's tweet combines elements of broadcast media and person-to-person interaction, said Dr. Nicholas Christakis, an internist and sociologist at Harvard University and author of the forthcoming book "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives."

Information goes out to a lot of people, like a newspaper, but only to a select group of people -- "followers" -- who will likely be interested in it, he said.

"Retweeting tends to segment the market and reach those individuals who are most likely to be responsive to the information," Christakis said.

Retweets are also gaining traction in the search engine world. A new tool called Topsy is powered by tweets and shows the Twitter users considered most "influential" about topics; users get more influence the more their links get retweeted. "So, yes, retweets are the new currency on the Web," Michael Arrington wrote last month onTechCrunch, his popular industry blog.

One of the central forces of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook is the way these services make users "feel like the center of a social universe," said Daniel Berdichevsky, editor of the forthcoming book "The Psychology of Facebook," in an e-mail.

The label "followers" on Twitter makes users feel like "leaders," and puts extra pressure on users to both lead and matter to other people -- which is where retweeting comes in.

"You're leading people to something that you think is valuable for them -- the online equivalent of a watering hole or fresh prey," he said. "And you're mattering because your re-tweet presumably gives them something they lacked and wanted."

 Fundamentally, it's not all that different from the way people behave away from their computers, he said. People often suggest restaurants to each other, partly because they want friends to enjoy good meals, but also because they receive gratitude for the recommendation, and want to keep the restaurants in business.

Similarly, when people speak in person, they'll often ask each other if they've watched particular television shows or seen certain Web sites, which happens on Twitter all the time, said Graham Jones, a psychologist and consultant who specializes in the way people use theInternet, in an e-mail.

Online interactions play into "ancient proclivities," such as the desires to connect with others and pass along gossip, Christakis said.

Retweeting may resemble the phenomenon of forwarding stories, links, or received messages to everyone on your e-mail address list, said Richard Sherman, professor emeritus of psychology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Like retweeting, there is the intimacy of "psst -- here's something you MUST see" mixed with the impersonal nature of mass communication, he said.

Motivations behind retweeting include info, ego, identity and amusement, said B.J. Fogg, founder of the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, who researches how computers change people's thoughts and behaviors, in an e-mail. By retweeting, people seek to inform others, make themselves look smart and well-connected, express who they are and what they believe, and entertain others, he said. These are the same reasons why people clip articles and post bumper stickers, said Fogg, who is also co-editor of "The Psychology of Facebook."

"If you retweet [something] to everyone on your list, you might or might not think that everyone in your list needs to know this information, but you might send it along to show, 'hey, look what I know,' " Christakis said.

Retweeting also promotes reciprocity, experts said. The more you retweet someone else, the more likely they will be to reference you also. People also believe retweeting will help them get more followers or more attention to their own Twitter feeds, Jones said.

Of course, retweets don't always make sense, and the constant stream of them can get annoying, users say.

Still, Taylor, who has accumulated more than 5,000 followers and is disconnected from Twitter only while sleeping, appreciates the "viral" aspect of retweeting.

"The coolest thing about retweeting is that, if you say anything that might be valuable, it spreads like wildfire," she said. 

 

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/23/why.retweet.twitter/index.html

 

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Iran: The End of the Beginning

 

Iran: The End of the Beginning

 

 

TEHRAN — Iran's 1979 revolution took a full year to gestate. The uprising of 2009 has now ended its first phase. But the volatility ushered in by the June 12 ballot-box putsch of Iran's New Right is certain to endure over the coming year. The Islamic Republic has been weakened.

 

During one of the violent clashes here in recent days, I saw a member of the riot police confront a protester holding a cell phone. "Don't take a photograph of me!" he yelled at the young man.

"Why?" the man shouted back. "You're not naked."

But the Islamic Republic is. Everyone knows where everyone stands; it isn't pretty. All the fudge that allowed a modern society to coexist with a theocracy inspired by an imam occulted in the 9th century has been swept away, leaving two Irans at war.

One of those Irans, embodied in the 12-member Guardian Council, the highest legal body, ruled in a preliminary statement on Tuesday that "no major fraud" had occurred in the vote and that its annulment was therefore impossible. Not much surprise there, in that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, made clear last week that the recount was a waste of time.

Of course, the definition of "major" is up for debate. Khamenei himself said rigging one million votes might be feasible, and the council found irregularities with three million votes.

But numbers have ceased to mean anything here. All the evidence is that percentages were simply allotted to each candidate and the votes cast backward-engineered from there. The Interior Ministry took 10 days to divulge results for all provinces. Such engineering takes time.

Iran has squandered a huge opportunity to bridge the gulf between the regime and an increasingly sophisticated population thirsting for greater freedom. A vibrant election campaign opened a door. It has been slammed shut.

"The Islamic Republic is the flag-bearer of human rights," Khamenei declared in his Friday sermon. Over the past week, it has looked more like a flag-bearing police state.

True, the regime has not opened fire Tiananmen Square-style on the millions who have taken to the streets. I don't believe it has the unity to do that. Significant cracks have emerged within the establishment, certainly the largest since the bloody first couple of years after the revolution. Relentless official attacks on foreign agents as the instigators of unrest have not papered over these divisions.

As the Association of Combatant Clergy, which represents more liberal mullahs in Qom, said in a statement: "What sane mind believes that a peaceful movement of millions of informed people — including workers, shopkeepers, farmers, students, clergy and others — could be agents of a so-called enemy?"

I said the Islamic Republic has been weakened. Why? I see five principal factors. The first is that the supreme leader's post — the apex of the structure conceived by the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — has been undermined. The keystone of the arch is now loose.

Khamenei, far from an arbiter with a Prophet-like authority, has looked more like a ruthless infighter. His word has been defied. At night, from rooftops, I've even heard people call for his death. The unthinkable has occurred.

The second is that the hypocritical but effective contract that bound society has been broken. The regime never had active support from more than 20 percent of the population. But acquiescence was secured by using only highly targeted repression (leaving the majority free to go about its business), and by giving people a vote for the president every four years.

That's over. Repression will be broad and ferocious in the coming months. The acquiescent have already become the angry. You can't turn Iran into Burma: The resistance of a society this varied and savvy will be fierce.

The third is that a faction loyal to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, fiercely nationalistic and mystically religious, has made a power grab so bold that fissures in the establishment have become canyons.

Members of this faction include Hassan Taeb, the leader of the Basiji militia; Saeed Jalili, the head of the National Security Council and chief nuclear negotiator; and Mojtaba Khamenei, the reclusive but influential son of the supreme leader.

They have their way for now, but the cost to Iran has been immense, and the rearguard action led by Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a father of the revolution, and Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader, will be intense.

The fourth is that Iran's international rhetoric, effective in Ahmadinejad's first term, will be far less so now. Every time he talks of justice and ethics, his two favorite words, video will roll of Neda Agha Soltan's murder and the regime's truncheon-wielding goons at work. The president may prove too much of a liability to preserve.

The fifth is that, at the very peak of its post-revolution population boom, the regime has lost a whole new generation — and particularly the women of that generation — by failing to adapt.

Thirty years from the revolution, the core question of this election was: Must Iran stand apart from the forces of economic and political globalization in order to preserve its Islamic theocracy?

Or is it confident enough of its Islamic identity, and its now firmly established independence from America, to trash the nest-of-spies vitriol and an ultimately self-defeating isolation?

The answer has been devastating.

 

By ROGER COHEN

Published: June 23, 2009

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/opinion/24iht-edcohen.html

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Will France Impose a Ban on the Burqa?: Secularism is the religion of contemporary France.

 

Will France Impose a Ban on the Burqa?

 

Secularism is the religion of contemporary France. And the enforcers of that faith have a new target. "Today ... we are confronted by certain Muslim women wearing the burqa, which covers and fully envelops the body and the head like a moving prison," said Andre Gerin, a Communist Party legislator who joined 57 others on Wednesday in signing a motion for a parliamentary committee to study possible legislation to ban the wearing of the traditional costume in public. Despite the fervor of Gerin and his allies, however, the burqa remains sufficiently rare in France that even the legislators railing against it are unable to say how many Muslim women in the country actually wear one. All Gerin would say was, "There are more and more of them, not only in big cities, but in rural settings as well ... We have to break the silence of this country's political leaders on the matter."

Silence is hardly the word to characterize the matter of France and professions of religious piety. Last year the country's highest administrative court denied the naturalization request of an otherwise irreproachable Moroccan woman on the grounds that her wearing a burqa was incompatible with French secularist statutes. On Tuesday, French Scientologists raised complaints of religious intolerance when state prosecutors wrapped up their arguments against the church on charges of organized swindling by requesting that the organization be disbanded and barred in France.(Read an argument against the veil by Azadeh Moaveni.)

The champions of French secularism note that the Scientology trial is based on fraud accusations, not religious practice. Meanwhile, the burqa offensive is aimed at protecting the rights of women forced to efface themselves by covering their bodies entirely. "The rights of women isn't an issue of a few centimeters of cloth, but the burqa is the symbol of the oppression women suffer, so this debate should be encouraged," says Siham Habchi, president of the Neither Whores Nor Submissive women's movement, referring to the parliamentary initiative.(Check out a story about Europe's "veil wars.")

But what about the rights of Muslim women who honestly feel faith-bound to voluntarily don a burka? Or those prohibited by law from attending public school with the headscarves they wear everywhere else? Why is no one ranting about nuns' habits being "degrading" (as Gerin called the burqa), just as no one lashed out at creeping extremism when then–First Lady Bernadette Chirac covered her head during Vatican visits?

Probably because Catholicism has deep roots in French history and culture and is not viewed as a foreign faith the way Islam is, which, with about 6 million practitioners, is the second largest religion in France. Its practitioners are also growing at a faster rate than Catholics. Indeed, the expanding size of Islam and fears about spreading extremism seem to have emboldened pundits and policy-makers to wade in and legislate aspects of Muslim observance and life in ways that they would be wary of doing with Catholics, Protestants or Jews.

At this point, no Muslim defenders of the rare French burqa have emerged. Indeed, Dounia Bouzar, a specialist on Muslim affairs, notes that while she and many fellow Muslims opposed the headscarf ban as meddling in private matters of choice, she is relieved at action taken on the burqa. "Imposition of this garment on women is one manner Salafists get individuals to renounce their individuality and submit to the extremist cult thinking that masquerades as Islam — but which is an abomination of it," Bouzar says. "That Salafist influence and activity is spreading, and if it takes political action to prevent their cult from leading Muslims astray of Islam, so be it."

France isn't the first nation to consider a burqa ban. In 2006, Dutch officials caused a storm of protest from its Muslim populace by proposing a burqa interdiction. A law imposing a ban may soon be passed. France is not that far yet. The parliamentary motion to form an investigating committee must be approved before that body can be formed. If it is, it must study the burqa and reasons why those women who wear it do so, and consider recommendations whether to ban it. Drafting and voting legislation to that end would take months. Before then, public debate would rage on whether the move is merited — or another example of intolerance toward Islam. "Tolerance of the burqa requires a colonial view of Islam as so backwards that forcing a woman to erase herself that way seems natural," Bouzar argues. "The burqa debate isn't secularity vs. Islam, but manipulation and oppression vs. dignity."

 

By BRUCE CRUMLEY / PARIS Friday, Jun. 19, 2009

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1905554,00.html

 

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'Veil Wars' Reveal Europe's Intolerance

 'Veil Wars' Reveal Europe's Intolerance

 

Europe's traditions of secular tolerance appear to be haunted by the Islamic veil. Every week seems to bring new headlines announcing moves to crack down on the wearing of what critics appear to deem this most alienating symbol of Muslim faith, whether in French public schools, British government buildings or out in public in the Netherlands.

But is European tolerance more threatened by hijabhead-scarf, or even the face-covering niqab — and the Islamic fundamentalism and subjugation of women critics ascribe to these symbols — or by the hypocrisy and low-grade xenophobia of those telling Muslim women that this attack on their religious practice is really for their own good? Beneath all the reminders of secularist tradition and progressive discourse cited in Europe's headscarf debate lies the mean, provincial "not in our country, you don't" attitude — even when many of the women at whom it's addressed to were born and raised in "our country". When all is said and done, the headscarf furor reflects a broader sentiment wafting across: it's fine to be Muslim, just don't remind us about it by the way you dress.

Following France's school laws and the calls by Britain's Prime Minister to refrain from wearing the niqab in public, the Dutch center-right government has pledged that if it is returned to power in Wednesday's election, it will pass a law prohibiting the wearing of niqab and full-body burqa in public. Holland's 1 million Muslims have lived under an air of suspicion from the wider society since the 2004 murder of controversial film-maker Theo van Gogh by a Islamist radical. That killing and the subsequent arrests of extremists plotting terror attacks have understandably raised Dutch concerns over violence committed in the name of Islam, but they don't justify the over-kill and subtle bigotry behind the promised ban. Opponents of the move note that only a few score women wear a burqa or niqab in the Netherlands, and that such high-profile measures directed at a statistically irrelevant minority are really a message to all Muslims to start acting more Dutch (whatever that means) and less Muslim.

The promised Dutch ban is only the most recent and bizarre in a spate of assaults by European democracies that appear to be targeting the veil as a proxy for what they see as a dangerous spread of Islamic culture in Western Europe. In Britain, former Foreign Minister Jack Straw last month groused that the niqab created unnecessary barriers between people, and prevented communication because meaningful exchange "requires that both sides see each other's face". Prime Minister Tony Blair later added that it created a divisive "mark of separation." Wearing the hijab in schools is against the law in certain German states, and similar bans are on the books in some parts of Belgium. France's 2003 legislation banning headscarves in public schools has been hailed by supporters as a success of secularity over furtive proselytizing by fundamentalists. But it has further strained relations between the wider society and the nation's estimated 6 million Muslims — the vast majority of whom are moderate or non-observant Muslims who nonetheless resent the heavy-handed treatment of the approximately 1,200 female students who previously wore a headscarf to class.

It is this fact, that both in France and much of the rest of Europe the veils in question are worn by such a small minority of Muslim women, that makes the crackdown seem downright obsessive. Supporters of such action counter that veils symbolize a subordination of women, and that they challenge or threaten more progressive Muslim women who decline the veil. Such arguments might sound convincing until one bothers listen to women wearing those same veils, and their earnest explanations that the coverings symbolize modesty, humility, devotion to their faith, and subservience to no one but their god. Unless all these women are self-denying liars manipulated by radical males, shouldn't their interpretation of headscarf symbolism be regarded as at least as legitimate as hijab and niqab opponents? The problem with symbols is they are exactly as potent or weak as the passion invested in them — and both sides of this debate see some powerful symbolism in headscarves.

French Islam expert Olivier Roy writes that since 9/11, Muslims find themselves, their actions, and their motives being interpreted, characterized, and frequently skewed from non-Muslim perspectives. He's got a great point. One shouldn't doubt the concern and good intentions of progressives and secularists calling for Muslim women to resist socio-cultural coercion and shed the hijab and niqab as an impediment to full integration into European society. Still, those same opponents of the veil shouldn't presume they can dismiss as misguided or deluded the conviction of women who say they wear hijab by choice, and who argue that the only coercion they feel is coming from opponents of these symbols of their faith.

How can any non-Muslim — or even male practitioner of Islam — claim to have a stake in this debate without having ever walked a mile in someone else's hijab? In a modern and open-minded world comfortable with self-indulgent fashion preferences, permanent "body art", or cosmetic surgery, isn't there something particularly inappropriate to heated public rowing over someone else's notion of modesty? Fundamentalism is deserving of criticism, we can all agree — but that should extend to the "progressive" fundamentalism driving the campaign against the veil, too.

 

By BRUCE CRUMLEY/PARIS Friday, Nov. 24, 2006

 

 

 http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1562873,00.html

 

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Why Tony Blair Is Right About the Veil

Why Tony Blair Is Right About the Veil

 

I dislike the veil. But last year, when I spent a month reporting from all over Afghanistan, I wore one the entire time — because Afghan society cannot yet tolerate unveiled women, and I wanted to connect with people and do my job effectively. I could have gone bare-headed, but it would have sent the hostile message that I didn't care about integrating with the society around me. Did I enjoy having to reconsider my anti-veil stance? Of course not. I detested how wobbly the veil made my beliefs feel, and I trashed it on my flight out of Kabul. But I was the one who had gone to Afghanistan; Afghanistan had not come to me. That made it my responsibility to deal with how my presence affected those around me.

I've thought about this constantly since the debate erupted in Britain over whether Muslim women should wear full-face veils. Prime Minister Tony Blair has backed calls by his party's parliamentary leader, Jack Straw, that Muslim women in Britain should refrain from covering their full faces, particularly when dealing with the wider society. The indignation of British Muslims — their refusal, really, to even have a conversation about the issue — strikes me as particularly delusional, given the climate of post-9/11 Europe. It would be like me traipsing as an American into hostile, post-Taliban Afghanistan, imagining I could bare my hair without alienating those around me. To expect this would involve an unhealthy relationship with reality.

The fact that the issue in Britain does not seem to be the veil per se, but the more extreme full-face covering known as the niqab, the comments of Blair and Straw seem perfectly reasonable to me. Neither of them asked Muslim women to abandon their belief in hijab, or the custom of veiling, altogether. Both zeroed in on the niqab, a minority practice considered extreme by even mainstream Muslim standards. (The niqabtradition is confined to certain regions of the Muslim world, parts of the Gulf, and Pakistan; a similar covering is known as the burqa in Afghanistan.) I come from a Muslim family and have spent years living in various Muslim communities around the Middle East. Every single Muslim female friend I've had, from pious to secular, veiled to vixen, has been unable to befriend, or even hold a proper conversation with a niqab-wearer. The young son of a close friend, raised in a large Muslim family in a large Muslim country, calls them "ninja ladies." Covering the face, whether in Yorkshire or Beirut, seems to send a universal message of separateness. If the full-face veil is considered creepy by many Muslim women in the Middle East, why wouldn't it cause a twinge of unease among ordinary British people with no tradition of veiling at all?

The idea that women in niqab can assimilate properly into a community or be effective as teachers distresses me, because it is at heart disingenuous. Clearly, meaningful social exchange requires a face. And the argument that non-verbal communication is inessential only addresses half the problem. The obscured woman, who can see her interlocutor clearly through her slits, is enjoying contact with a face; it's the other party, conversing with a tiny black tent, that bears the burden of the discomfort. It would be more sincere for niqab-wearers to say that they accept the cost of refusing to compromise on the niqab; that it will be considered provocative by their non-Muslim fellow citizens, that it might slow their own assimilation into British society.

 

By AZADEH MOAVENI/TEHRAN Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2006

 

 

 http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1547572,00.html

 

 

  

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"Thank God I'm an atheist:" The surrealistic cinema of Luis Bunuel

"Thank God I'm an atheist:" The surrealistic cinema of Luis Bunuel

 

Luis Bunuel is the Spanish surrealist whose films include Un Chien Andalou (where the eyeball is slit), L'Age D'Or, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Diary of a Chambermaid, The Exterminating Angel, Simon of the Desert and a film about the life of Jesus that contains a funny bit where Jesus is running to the Sermon of the Mount because he's late.

 

"The thought of death has been familiar to me for a long time," says Director Luis Bunuel. "From the time that skeletons were carried through the streets of Calanda during the Holy Week procession, death has been an integral part of my life. I've never wished to forget or deny it, but there's not much to say about it when you're an atheist" (255). So reads an accurate testimonial to the personal and artistic sentiment of this odd and serious filmmaker. Like many of his contemporary surrealists, Bunuel is a paradox who on one hand claims apathy towards ultimate end, being, and Being, yet on the other hand loads his impressive body of work with moribund imagery and strange ideas about the God he so vociferously denies. Bunuel exhibits a radical, iconoclastic view of the world in which he finds society decadent and antithetical to human liberation. He has been called a realist, a surrealist, a Marxist, an anarchist, a mystic, an anticleric, a Freudian, a post-Freudian, a sadist, a moralist, a Christian, and a poet-showman of the macabre. His scenarios range from the absurd to the tragic to the satiric to the erotic, profusely endued with the outrageous and the scandalous. 

 

Luis Bunuel has long been recognized in European critical circles as a great and prolific filmmaker on a par with Eisenstein, Chaplin, and Fellini. However, only recently has his reputation in America begun to catch up. Over his fifty-year career he directed thirty-two feature films and worked in Spain, France, Mexico, Italy, and the United States. Utilizing sardonic humor and the imagery of surrealism, Bunuel set out to undermine the values and institutions people take for granted. His aims were specific: through the surreal, visualizing the impulses of the uncon-scious, he would, he said, "shatter the optimism of the bourgeoisie world and force the reader (or spectator) to question the permanency of the prevailing order" (Mellen 3). 

 

Luis Bunuel was born February 22, 1900 in Calanda, a small town in the province of Teruel, Spain. As a youth he received a Jesuit education, displaying exceptional talent in music, athletics, and the natural sciences. He enjoyed a comfortable upbringing in a reasonably wealthy, close-knit family. His family came from liberal, semi-intellectual, land-owning bourgeoisie. These details are not irrelevant. To comprehend Bunuel's works it is essential to understand that he was first a Spaniard and secondly a product of Spanish bourgeoisie. Virginia Higgenbotham points out that "blasphemy is only a form of thinking for any intelligent Spaniard," and also that the "art of his country is rich in eroticism and profoundly preoccupied with death" (18, 20). Bunuel says:

My infancy slipped by in an almost medieval atmosphere (like that of nearly all the Spanish provinces) between my native town and Zaragova. I feel it necessary to say here (since it explains in part the trend of the modest work which I later accomplished) that the two basic sentiments of my childhood which stayed with me well into adolescence, are those of a profound eroticism, at first sublimated in a great religious faith, and a permanent consciousness of death. It would take too long here to analyze the reasons. It suffices that I was not an exception among my compatriots, since this is a very Spanish characteristic, and our art, exponent of the Spanish spirit, was impregnated with these two sentiments. The last civil war, peculiar and ferocious as no other exposed them clearly.

Coming of age, Bunuel expressed a strong urge to go to Paris to study music but was sent instead to Madrid to study agricultural engineering. After a few years, he switched his studies to entomology, and, more importantly, began forming close friendships with a group of young artists who were to influence him strongly in the future. These companions included the poets Frederico Garcia Lorca and Jose Moreno Villa and the painter Salvador Dali. In the Madrid residencia Bunuel developed his interest in the arts, theater, and acting and gained his introduction to surrealism. After graduating in 1925 with a degree in Philosophy and Letters, Bunuel moved to Paris, joined by a few members of his residencia coterie. 

 

Bunuel arrived in Paris highly recommended by influential friends of his parents and was introduced into the best intellectual circles of the city. He was soon hired as an Assistant Director to Jean Epstien, "the only director of that bleak era of the French cinema to merit the title of an intellectual filmmaker" (Aranda 32). While honing his skills working as an A.D., Bunuel also began contributing articles to various literary cinema periodicals, most notably La Gaceta Hispanoamericana . In 1929 he formally entered the Paris Surrealist Group. Within this setting he embarked on his first film project as director, a collaboration with his residencia friend Salvador Dali, entitled Un Chien Andalou. He collaborated with Dali again in 1930 on another surrealist film, L_Age d'Or. The rest, as they say, is history. 

 

Some critics, most notably Pauline Kael and Penelope Gilliatt, now regard Bunuel as the Hitchcock of surrealism--a venerated master in total command of his medium and for whom the art of filmic manipulation became a "delightful form of play." For Bunuel, however, play had little to do with it. Rather, he saw surrealism as a revolutionary, poetic, and moral movement:

All of us were supporters of a certain concept of revolution, and although the surrealists didn't consider themselves terrorists, they were constantly fighting a society they despised. The principle weapon was not guns, of course, it was scandal. Scandal was a potent agent of revelation, capable of exposing such social crimes as exploitation of one man by another, colonialist imperialism, religious tyranny--in sum, all the secret and odious underpinnings of a system that had to be destroyed.

He went on to say, "The purpose of surrealism was not to create a new literary, artistic, or even philosophical movement, but to explode the social order, to transform life itself' ( 107). Salvador Dali recalled the surrealists ideology, "It is possible to systematize confusion thanks to a paranoia and active process of thought and so assist in discrediting completely the world of reality" (Gould 37). 

 

Indeed, the intent of surreal art is to move one from the conscious mind into the subconscious. It seeks to affect the emotions through the mind. Michael Gould states in Surrealism and the Cinema , "If the vision revealed is too much for the rational mind to absorb (too intense, too threatening, too 'real') yet cannot be rejected, then it leaves the consciousness and comes to exist on a sublime level as pure surrealism" (13). In Un Chien Andalou, for example, a girl's eye is sliced with a razor blade, a man wipes his mouth completely off his face, dead donkey carcasses adorn a piano, a man's hand crawls with ants. Each of these images is clearly too intense for rational thought. 

 

Bunuel was drawn to the surrealist movement for more than revolutionary or psychological reasons. The moral aspects of the movement intrigued him as well:

For the first time in my life, I'd come into contact with a coherent moral system that, as far as I could tell, had no flaws. It was an aggressive morality based on the complete rejection of all existing values. We had other criteria: we exalted passion, mystification, black humor, the insult, and the call of the abyss. Inside this new territory, all our thoughts and actions seemed justifiable; there was simply no room for doubt. Everything made sense. Our morality may have been more demanding and more dangerous than the prevailing order, but it was also stronger, richer, more coherent.

The surreal qualities in Bunuel 's films can be traced to a number of sources, but the primary impetus was his "irrational sensibility" as evidenced by his treatment of image, montage, and sound. These gave his films their dreamlike quality. His most intense images are evocative of either humor or mystery. Mystery, he believed, is the essential element of any art; it is inseparable from chance, and the whole universe is a mystery, Bunuel believed that his own form of atheism led inevitably to the acceptance of the inexplicable. "Since I reject the idea of a divine watchmaker," he said, "(a notion even more mysterious than the mystery it supposedly explains), then I must consent to live in a kind of shadowy confusion.... At least it keeps my moral freedom intact" (174). Predictably, adherence to fantasy as opposed to reason in a rationalistic society leads to conflict. The surrealists opposed nearly all traditional values and, as noted before, sought to destroy "all conventional social, moral, and artistic habits of thought and perception" (Higgenbotham 30). Enter Un Chien Andalou .

 

In 1929, Un Chien Andalou was as shocking and scandalous as Bunuel and Dali had hoped it would be. It gave rise to a staggering range of interpretations: poetic, scandalous, incoherent, an attack upon critics, an attack upon religion, and attack upon the bourgeoisie. (Interestingly, the film was financed by Bunuel's bourgeois mother.) 

 

Un Chien Andalou (which means An Andalusian Dog--though there are no dogs in the film) was deliberately intended to jolt the spectator's peace of mind and to convey some of the basic beliefs underlying the surrealist movement, including the omnipotence of desire. Bunuel stated that he and Dali held to only one rule during the production, "No idea or image that might lend itself to rational explanation of any kind would be accepted. We had to open all doors to the irrational and keep only those images that surprised us without trying to explain why" (104). 

 

The aim of the film was not exclusively to shock, but to incendiarially affect the collective conscience. At the same time it was an indictment of all the art consumers who, either through stupidity, masochism, or self interest, were willing to swallow anything, no matter how much it went against their instincts. Bunuel asked, "What can I do about the people who adore all that is new, even when it goes against their deepest convictions, or about the insincere, corrupt press and the inane herd that saw beauty and poetry in something which was basically no more than a desperate call for murder?" (Bauche 9). 

 

The film is a dream and, like a dream, is both fascinating and disturbing. The opening scene in which a girl's eye is sliced sets the tone of the film's meandering and confusing itinerary. Many of the elements that make up the film are remnants of objective reality. The way they are arranged within the scenario pushes them into a mental reconstruction process--in exactly the way dreams draw on the previous day's experience. Interestingly, the images have the matter-of-fact quality of a newsreel, or what Higgenbotham calls a "prosaic realism" (38). 

 

Bunuel chose not to use the distorted lenses, supered images, or blurred focus (cinematic conventions of the day) to suggest the dreamlike quality of his film. Instead, he approached the entire non-narrative in a straightforward manner. He used the shocking incongruity of the images themselves to build the hallucinatory feeling of anguish that runs through the film. The unrealistic fashion in which the realistic images were juxtaposed was the perfect way, according to Freddy Bauche, to illustrate "the dramatic collision between desire and the object of desire" (10). 

 

Obviously, the director drew much of Un Chien Andalou from his Spanish heritage--the religious and social implications, the themes of emotionalism and death, even the donkey carcasses. "Thus Un Chien Andalou , as a milestone in the history of cinema, emerges from its director's adolescence in Spain and announces the themes and techniques that were to preoccupy Bunuel for half a century, through the rest of his career" (Higgenbotham 39). 

 

Where desire and eroticism prevailed in Un Chien Andalou , religion took center stage in Simon del Desierto (Simon of the Desert), produced in Mexico in 1965. Simon del Desierto is a bizarre little narrative set in the fifth century A.D. Saint Simon, in order to be as close to God as possible, has stood praying on top of a sixty-foot pillar for thirty-seven years. He is profoundly sanctimonious-to the degree that he even blesses his own tooth when it falls from his mouth. His devotion, however, is put to the test when the Devil (a woman wearing the uniform of a Catholic school girl) arrives in a slithering coffin at the pillar. She is intent on luring the Holy Disciple from his perch as she repeatedly ridicules him and insults his character. Simon heroically resists her temptations at every turn despite her various disguises; first, a priest, then a shepherd, and finally as the Savior himself. At last, despite Simon's holy strength, and for reasons not entirely clear, the Devil is able to exert her full power and whisk him away to hell--a Greenwich village disco where trendies writhe and grind to "The Radioactive Flesh." 

 

The implications are staggering. "The saint, devoted to his god, sits high on a pillar for all of life.... But the pillar, discolored over the years, winding and twisting its way to the ground, is the excrement of the saint. Saint though he is, his bowels must still move. So there he sits, near God indeed, but supported on a pillar of excrement" (Mellen 115). There have been several interpretations of this seemingly blasphemous imagery. One is that God and his church are really built on unacknowledged humanity. Another is that we can reach God only through understanding the true nature of our humanity. Still another is that religion (primarily Catholicism) is essentially a "pillar of excrement." Bunuel himself put all the interpretations in perspective when he said, "Thank God I'm still an atheist." 

 

Luis Bunuel's flair for perverse surrealism and his malicious attacks on conventional morality were fully realized in his second to last film, Le Fantome de la Liberte (The Phantom of Liberty), produced in France in 1974--almost fifty years after Un Chien Andalou. Fantome in many ways functioned as a sort of sequel to his 1972 film, Le Channe Discret de la Bourgeoisie (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie). The images are astounding and playfully absurd: Spanish hostages of the Napoleonic war cry "Down with Freedom!" as they are executed. A French lieutenant fondles the statue of a beautiful noblewoman and is struck on the head by another statue. Bourgeois couples discuss defecation around a toilet-lined table but consider "food" an impolite topic, and so on. 

 

The titular reference to a "phantom" boffows from the opening line of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto : "A specter is haunting Europe-the specter of communism." Bunuel twists this meaning to imply that the specter haunting the bourgeoisie is "the possibility of its own freedom unburdened by the dead ends of sexual license, willful irrationality, and the liberty to go beyond the self-indulgent eccentricities of the individual ego" (Mellen 318). Bunuel compared the film to one of his earlier surrealist works, L_Age d'Or , saying, "It is no longer possible to scandal-ize people as we did in 1930. Today you have to do it with sweet subversion" ( Mellen 183). Le Fantome de la Liberte charges that society has substituted arbitrary willfulness for freedom. One of the film's vignettes shows two parents who insist on declaring their daughter a missing person, although she is plainly sitting in front of them. The police, in a similar display of willful blindness to reality, even ask the child herself for her vital statistics and how she disappeared. In another episode, four chain-smoking monks gamble with their holy medallions in a card game. "I'll open with a virgin," says one. Another plays a "father." 

 

Bunuel believed reality is actually a smoke screen for hidden urges. He used the absurd to imply "an attack on specific abuses, not on some safely vague condition of man" (Durgnat 65). In Le Fantome de la Liberte Bunuel doubts not so much the possibility for society's redemption as its likelihood. "We have been rendered unwittingly comfortable within our psychic cages to the point where we prefer them to liberty, an experience and aspiration we neither understand or desire" (Mellen 331). 

 

For fifty years, Luis Bunuel made films about society's dilemmas. His art is his declaration of confidence in a human race dominated by a bourgeoisie given to hypocrisy, sadism, and above all, a disrespect for its own capacity to live differently and better. He summed it all up himself:

As I drift toward my last sigh, I often imagine a final joke. I convoke around my deathbed my friends who are confirmed atheists as I am. Then a priest, whom I have summoned, arrives; and to the horror of my friends, I make my confession, ask for absolution for my sins, and receive extreme unction. After which I turn over on my side and expire. But will I have the strength to joke at that moment?

Luis Bunuel died in 1983.

 

-- by Bryan M. Papciak

 

http://adamash.blogspot.com/2005/12/i-came-across-this-nice-essay-about_05.html

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"La burqa est un accoutrement sectaire"

"La burqa est un accoutrement sectaire"

 

Et si le débat actuel sur le port de la burqa n'avait rien à voir avec la

religion? Pour Dounia Bouzar, anthropologue du fait religieux et chercheuse associée au cabinet d'études "Cultes et Cultures Consulting", il n'est pas question de croyance mais d'endoctrinement.

Est-il légitime de créer une commission d'enquête sur le port de la burqa en France?

Oui. Faire semblant de ne rien voir serait pire que tout. Cela reviendrait à accepter le comportement de groupes sectaires comme des comportements religieux. Or si on respecte l'Islam, on ne peut qu'être choqué par ce groupe salafiste qui prône le port du niqab. Je dis bien le niqab et non la burqa, car en réalité c'est le niqab que l'on voit en France et qui pose problème. Le niqab est un accoutrement sectaire qui s'inscrit dans un discours d'autoexclusion et d'exclusion des autres. Un discours brandi par un groupuscule salafiste depuis 70 ans. En France, où la liberté de conscience est garantie, ces "gourous" s'immiscent partout. Ils persuadent leurs adeptes, comme ceux d'une secte. Ils prônent le port du niqab alors qu'il n'est pas inscrit dans le Coran. On ne peut accepter ça, au risque de reconnaitre les salafistes comme intimement liés à l'Islam, ce qu'ils ne sont pas, et du coup leur donner encore plus de pouvoir.

La question de la religion n'aurait pas de lien avec la possible interdiction du port du niqab...

"Pas la bienvenue" en France

Pour Nicolas Sarkozy, "le Parlement a choisi de se saisir de cette question, c'est la meilleure façon de procéder. "Il faut qu'il y ait un débat et que tous les points de vue s'expriment. (...) Nous ne devons pas avoir peur de nos valeurs, nous ne devons pas avoir peur de les défendre".Devant le Congrès réuni à Versailles, le chef de l'Etat a balayé l'argument religieux. Le voile intégral est un problème "de liberté et de dignité de la femme.(...) Ce n'est pas un signe religieux, c'est un signe d'asservissement, c'est un signe d'abaissement", a-t-il ajouté.

 Le débat religieux n'a pas sa place. On a tort de faire le raccourci avec la question du voile. Celle-ci est un débat théologique depuis la naissance de l'islam. La réflexion actuelle doit porter sur la question de l'endoctrinement et du droit commun. Le droit français garantit la liberté de manifester ses croyances à deux conditions: ne pas troubler l'ordre public et ne pas entraver les libertés fondamentales. Or le niqab enfreint ces deux critères. D'un côté il pose un problème d'ordre sécuritaire parce qu'on ne voit pas le visage de la personne. Dans ce sens, je suis pour qu'on fasse une loi comme en Belgique où on doit pouvoir voir le visage de tous les citoyens quand ce n'est pas carnaval...... De l'autre, le port du niqab pose problème pour la liberté d'autrui. Les femmes qui portent le niqab sont "désindividualisées". Le discours coupe la personne de tout ce qui la socialisait (parents, école, travail, autres musulmans...). Il lui fait miroiter la jouissance d'appartenir à une communauté purifiée, qui détient la vérité, supérieure au reste du monde. Les gourous tentent de créer l'unité totale entre adeptes: ils exagèrent les ressemblances en effaçant toutes différences -sexuelles, sociales, familiales, etc.- à l'intérieur du groupe. Ils exacerbent les différences avec tous ceux qui ne sont pas comme eux... Toutes les idéologies de rupture reposent sur des exaltations de groupe.

Il n'existe pas de statistiques pour mesurer le phénomène du port du niqab. Pensez-vous qu'il prend de l'ampleur?

Oui, je suis saisie par des imams qui voient des personnes répandre ces discours sectaires dans les mosquées. Ils font autorité auprès de plus en plus de jeunes vulnérables pas forcément issus de familles musulmanes... J'observe que ces jeunes-là n'ont pas de lien à un territoire -ils se sentent "de nulle part"-,  ont souvent grandi dans "les trous de mémoire" et ne connaissent pas la religion... Ils ont souvent eu des pères déchus, ne pouvant exercer leur autorité, pour des multiples raisons... Certains de ces adeptes ne sont pas dans la spiritualité: ils se fichent pas mal de Dieu. Ce qu'ils veulent, c'est prendre la place de Dieu... Ils sont, consciemment ou non, à la recherche de la toute puissance... Auprès de ces personnes, c'est aussi un travail de prévention qui s'impose.

 

http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/societe/la-burqa-est-un-accoutrement-sectaire_769320.html

 

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Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations

Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations

"Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and just think to yourself, 'Am I just full of hot gas?'" Dave Letterman to Rush

"A Political war is one in which everyone shoots from the lip." Raymond Moley

"A silent majority and goverment by the people is incompatible." Tom Hayden

AIDS

"And one of the things that -- that the -- the 

AIDS activists said regularly back then was, oh, 

this is only a matter of time before it spreads to 

the heterosexual community. It's only a matter of time.

And they used that as -- as one of the weapons to try 

to get people like Reagan to start talking about it 

from their standpoint. And of course it -- it hasn't. 

It -- it didn't, and it hasn't, other than in Africa, 

and in Africa it is -- it is being spread not just by 

-- it -- it -- it's promiscuity that -- that -- that 

spreads this, if you want to know the truth. 

It's promiscuity.

But it -- it hasn't made that jump to the heterosexual 

community."

Rush Limbaugh

June 9, 2004 broadcast of The Rush Limbaugh Show

Blacks

"Why should Blacks be heard? They're 12% of the population. 

Who the hell cares." -Rush Limbaugh

'take that bone out of your nose and call me back.'

Rush Limbaugh

Source:Notable Quotables, mrc.org

Choice or Orgasms

"I think this reason why girls don't do well on multiple choice 

tests goes all the way back to the Bible, all the way back to Genesis, 

Adam and Eve. God said, 'All right, Eve, multiple choice or 

multiple orgasms, what's it going to be?' 

We all know what was chosen" (TV, Feb. 23, 1994). 

Citizen Service

Citizen service is a repudiation of the principles upon which 

our country was based. We are all here for ourselves." -

Condoms

"Condoms only work during the school year."

Drug Abuse

"And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, 

using drugs, importing drugs.  And the laws are good 

because we know what happens to people in societies and 

neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if 

people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought 

to be accused and they ought to be convicted and 

they ought to be sent up."

"When you strip it all away, Jerry Garcia 

(former Grateful Dead guitarist) destroyed his life on 

drugs.  And yet he's being honored, like some godlike 

figure.  Our priorities are out of whack, folks."

(well ditto heads?  I bet you still love this drug 

addicted, law-breaking drug freek.  Ever hear of 'just 

say no' or how by buying drugs you are supporting 

Osama?)

Earth

"The Earth's eco-system is not fragile."

Feminism

"Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive 

women easier access to the mainstream of society."

Homeless

"One of the things I want to do before I die is conduct the 

homeless olympics...the 10-metre shopping cart relay, 

the dumpster dig, and the hop, skip, and trip." 

Indians and VD

"I don't give a hoot that [Columbus] gave some Indians a 

disease that they didn't have immunity against" (Ought to Be, p. 45). 

Iraqi Prison Abuse

Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what 

happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going 

to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper 

our military effort, and then we are going to really 

hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these 

people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about 

people having a good time, these people, you ever heard 

of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some 

steam off? 

Rush's Radio Show 5-4-4

Jesse Jackson

'have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted 

criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?

Rush Limbaugh

Source:Notable Quotables, mrc.org

Lindsey Graham

"I may be wrong ... Lindsey Graham is certainly close enough to [McCain] to die of anal poisoning." 

Rush Limbaugh

Source:http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2008/02/06/2008-02-06_rush_limbaugh_a_real_bottom_dweller.html

Mexicans

If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people--

I'm serious, let the unskilled jobs that take absolutely 

no knowledge whatsoever to do--let the stupid and 

unskilled Mexicans do that work." 

Michael J. Fox (Parkinson's disease)

"He is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He's 

moving all around and shaking and it's purely an 

act. . . . This is really shameless of 

Michael J. Fox. Either he didn't take his medication 

or he's acting. This is the only time I've ever seen 

Michael J. Fox portray any of the symptoms of the 

disease he has. He can barely control himself."

Rush Limbaugh

Source: Rush's Radio Show 10-24-06

NAACP

"The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get 

a liquor store and practice robberies" 

(radio; reported in the Flush Rush Quarterly, January 1993). 

Donovan McNabb

"I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. 

The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well.  

There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit 

for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve."

Nuclear Arms Reduction

"The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them." 

Owls

"If the owl can't adapt to the superiority of humans, screw it" 

(Ought to Be, p. 162). 

Sierra Club

"The Sierra Club wants to limit the number of kids you can have 

to two. They are into power and controlling peoples lives." 

Sexual Harassement

Sexual harassment at this work station will not be reported. 

However...it will be graded!!!

Stuck

"Being stuck is a position few of us like. We want 

something new but cannot let go of the old - old ideas, 

beliefs, habits, even thoughts. We are out of 

contact with our own genius. Sometimes we know 

we are stuck; sometimes we don't. In both cases 

we have to DO something." 

Trees

"The most beautiful thing about a tree is what you 

do after you cut it down."

"We have more trees in this country today than when 

the Declaration of Independence was written. The wackos 

will tell you that's impossible."

"There are more acres of forestland in America today 

than when Columbus discovered the continent in 1492" 

Rush Lies

1) Limbaugh: "Don't let the liberals deceive you into 

believing that a decade of sustained growth without inflation 

in America (in the '80s) resulted in a bigger gap between the 

have and the have-nots. Figures compiled by the 

Congressional Budget Office dispel that myth" 

(Limbaugh, The Way Things Ought to Be, p. 70). 

Reality: CBO numbers for after-tax incomes show that in 

1980 the richest fifth of our country had eight times the 

income of the poorest fifth. By 1989, the ratio was more 

than 20-to-1. 

2)Limbaugh: "The poorest people in America are better off 

than the mainstream families of Europe" (radio, 1993). 

Reality: The poorest 20 percent of Americans can purchase 

an average of $5,433 worth of goods with their income. 

Meanwhile, in Germany, the average person can purchase 

$20,610 worth of goods; in France, $19,200; 

in Britain, $16,730 (World Development Report 1994, 

published by the World Bank).

 

 http://home.att.net/~jrhsc/rush.html

"Barack the Magic Negro" parody

On March 19, 2007 Limbaugh referred to a Los Angeles Times editorial by David Ehrenstein which claimed thatBarack Obama was filling the role of the "magic negro", and that this explained his appeal to voters.[37] Limbaugh then later played a song by Paul Shanklin, "Barack the Magic Negro," sung to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon".[38]

Tags: OxyContin, Republican Party, Leader of Republican Party, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh_is_a_Big_Fat_Idiot_and_Other_Observations, 

 

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Are Brighton Girls Really Like The Moon?~~SADI RANSON-POLIZZOTTI

Are Brighton Girls Really Like The Moon?~~

SADI RANSON-POLIZZOTTI

 

It must be because I am from an island and that everyone here thinks that

everyone there knows everybody else.

It must be that people trust me so much that they ask the absurd.

It must be that I am the sort of friend that others feel they may seek

the answers to things of which they have always wondered but

where afraid to ask, like,

"Are Brighton girls really like the moon?"

See,

this is not even original. It is Bob Dylan's line.

But,

there must be an echo in here because I keep hearing the

same question and saying,

Please!

Stop!

becauseI do not know I do not care I never thought about it I still

do not this is not worth my time it is neither here nor there even this

tap-tap typing is not worth this but since it is the only thing that

may perhapssatisfy what is clearly a curiosity

I will, from now on, have a ready answer.

Yes! Brighton girls are just like the moon!

They are perpetually twenty-two or however young is young enough for you.

Each is as rare and exotic as a blue moon.

Their faces are luminous as evening vespers beam

coming their lit-from-within skin that glows when damp with ethereal dew –

can

you

imagine?

They are plump and pert in all the right places.

They have just the right amount of junk-in-the-trunk and they

hold their asses high for your benefit as they walk on by like ...

The Girl From Ipanema.

Beneath their clothes they wear silk slips and seamed stockings.

Their skin is softer than anything you've ever known and is pure

and pale as buttermilk.

They smell like ... that smell you told me you loved.

They read Kant and Spinoza when not quoting Chaucer.

They are pure. They are sacred.

I've heard that some of them can levitate.

One or two or three or more has probably been waiting her whole

life

for that moment when you come along and do or say

. . . whatever

So – are Brighton girls like the moon?

Here's a thought:

Take one or two on a tilt-a-whirl thrill ride.

Go fast, go slow, go backward, go forward, go upside down, roll on

your side, go in the tunnel, go out, go really really fast, kiss her at

the top of the Ferris wheel and say, "Yeah, sure, I love you," then

take her to someplace – somewhere.

Just be sure to send me a postcard to let me know if Brighton girls are really like the moon.

Oh, the thing is, I don't have my forwarding address just yet ...

copyright: sadi ranson-polizzotti, 2009

for goodness' sake, new poems by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

forthcoming in (for goodness' sake), new poems by sadi ranson-polizzotti.

tag: SADI RANSON-POLIZZOTTI

tag: http://www.facebook.com/pages/SADI-RANSON-POLIZZOTTI/90488418895

tag: http://www.tantmieux.squarespace.com/

tag: http://tantmieux.squarespace.com/for-goodness-sake-sadi-ranso/

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My Space Becomes Tiny: MySpace slashes head count by 30 percent

My Space Becomes Tiny: My Space slashes head count by 30 percent

Amid economic woes, stagnant growth, and a management shakeup, onetime social-networking pioneer MySpace has announced that it has cut its head count by slightly under 30 percent in what the company calls a "return to start-up culture." Well, that's a nice way to put it.

Reports had circulated that MySpace would be laying off nearly half its employees in a move that had delayed its relocation to a bigger office space in the Los Angeles area. With the layoffs, MySpace's full-time U.S. employee roster will be down to 1,000 people--which means somewhere just south of 500 jobs were cut.

MySpace said that the layoffs are evenly distributed across all U.S. divisions of the company. Since MySpace also operates a number of offices overseas, it's not yet clear how they were affected (if at all), and representatives declined comment as to whether international offices would be affected down the road. CNET News has heard rumors that there may be consolidation in some of MySpace's European offices, something that the company did late last year when it merged its Amsterdam and Berlin offices.

"Today the domestic restructure is the only info we can share," MySpace representative Tracy Akselrud said in a phone call Tuesday.

"Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company," Owen Van Natta, CEO of the News Corp.-owned social site, said in a release. "I understand that these changes are painful for many. They are also necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace. Our intent is to return to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product."

Van Natta, the former chief operating officer at Facebook, was hired as CEO of MySpace late in April after a short stint at the head of start-up Project Playlist. Former CEO Chris DeWolfe had stepped down earlier that month, reportedly at the behest of Jonathan Miller, the new digital czar at News Corp. Executive shakeups at MySpace had been happening sporadically for nearly a year at that point.

MySpace's new executive lineup gives it solid entertainment street cred: Van Natta was joined by former MTV digital exec Jason Hirschhorn and former AOLer Michael Jones. Late last year, another MTV digital-media executive, Courtney Holt, joined MySpace as the head of its new MySpace Music division.

A source with knowledge of the situation said that senior management was spared Tuesday's cuts.

Launching MySpace Music, which focuses on free streaming music supported by advertising, was a return to the company's roots: once a hub for indie band promotion and community, MySpace had grown massive before Facebook began to catch up to it in international and then U.S. traffic. Partnerships with the likes of Google and a prominent endorsement of the OpenSocial developer initiative didn't help it regain traction as a networking destination.

Holt told CNET News in March that MySpace Music's traffic was "huge." But record label executives--who are partners in the MySpace Music joint venture--reported dissatisfaction with the revenues it was generating.

Last update at 11:13 a.m. PT.

 

by Caroline McCarthy

 

 

  http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10265566-36.html?tag=nl.e498

 

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Ballad Of The Skeletons Lyrics by: Allen Ginsberg

Ballad Of The Skeletons Lyrics by: Allen Ginsberg

 

 

Said the Presidential Skeleton 

I won't sign the bill 

Said the Speaker skeleton 

Yes you will 

 

Said the Representative Skeleton 

I object 

Said the Supreme Court skeleton 

Whaddya expect 

 

Said the Miltary skeleton 

Buy Star Bombs 

Said the Upperclass Skeleton 

Starve unmarried moms 

 

Said the Yahoo Skeleton 

Stop dirty art 

Said the Right Wing skeleton 

Forget about yr heart 

 

Said the Gnostic Skeleton 

The Human Form's divine 

Said the Moral Majority skeleton 

No it's not it's mine 

 

Said the Buddha Skeleton 

Compassion is wealth 

Said the Corporate skeleton 

It's bad for your health 

 

Said the Old Christ skeleton 

Care for the Poor 

Said the Son of God skeleton 

AIDS needs cure 

 

Said the Homophobe skeleton 

Gay folk suck 

Said the Heritage Policy skeleton 

Blacks're outa luck 

 

Said the Macho skeleton 

Women in their place 

Said the Fundamentalist skeleton 

Increase human race 

 

Said the Right-to-Life skeleton 

Foetus has a soul 

Said Pro Choice skeleton 

Shove it up your hole 

 

Said the Downsized skeleton 

Robots got my job 

Said the Tough-on-Crime skeleton 

Tear gas the mob 

 

Said the Governor skeleton 

Cut school lunch 

Said the Mayor skeleton 

Eat the budget crunch 

 

Said the Neo Conservative skeleton 

Homeless off the street! 

Said the Free Market skeleton 

Use 'em up for meat 

 

Said the Think Tank skeleton 

Free Market's the way 

Said the Saving & Loan skeleton 

Make the State pay 

 

Said the Chrysler skeleton 

Pay for you & me 

Said the Nuke Power skeleton 

& me & me & me 

 

Said the Ecologic skeleton 

Keep Skies blue 

Said the Multinational skeleton 

What's it worth to you? 

 

Said the NAFTA skeleton 

Get rich, Free Trade, 

Said the Maquiladora skeleton 

Sweat shops, low paid 

 

Said the rich GATT skeleton 

One world, high tech 

Said the Underclass skeleton 

Get it in the neck 

 

Said the World Bank skeleton 

Cut down your trees 

Said the I.M.F. skeleton 

Buy American cheese 

 

Said the Underdeveloped skeleton 

We want rice 

Said Developed Nations' skeleton 

Sell your bones for dice 

 

Said the Ayatollah skeleton 

Die writer die 

Said Joe Stalin's skeleton 

That's no lie 

 

Said the Middle Kingdom skeleton 

We swallowed Tibet 

Said the Dalai Lama skeleton 

Indigestion's whatcha get 

 

 

Said the World Chorus skeleton 

That's their fate 

Said the U.S.A. skeleton 

Gotta save Kuwait 

 

Said the Petrochemical skeleton 

Roar Bombers roar! 

Said the Psychedelic skeleton 

Smoke a dinosaur 

 

Said Nancy's skeleton 

Just say No 

Said the Rasta skeleton 

Blow Nancy Blow 

 

Said Demagogue skeleton 

Don't smoke Pot 

Said Alcoholic skeleton 

Let your liver rot 

 

Said the Junkie skeleton 

Can't we get a fix? 

Said the Big Brother skeleton 

Jail the dirty pricks 

 

Said the Mirror skeleton 

Hey good looking 

Said the Electric Chair skeleton 

Hey what's cooking? 

 

Said the Talkshow skeleton 

Fuck you in the face 

Said the Family Values skeleton 

My family values mace 

 

Said the NY Times skeleton 

That's not fit to print 

Said the CIA skeleton 

Cantcha take a hint? 

 

Said the Network skeleton 

Believe my lies 

Said the Advertising skeleton 

Don't get wise! 

 

Said the Media skeleton 

Believe you me 

Said the Couch-potato skeleton 

What me worry? 

 

Said the TV skeleton 

Eat sound bites 

Said the Newscast skeleton 

That's all Goodnight

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We Fought Drugs: Drugs Won The War

 

We Fought Drugs: Drugs Won the War

 

This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won.

 

 

 "We've spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs," Norm Stamper, a former police chief of Seattle, told me. "What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency. It's a dismal failure."

For that reason, he favors legalization of drugs, perhaps by the equivalent of state liquor stores or registered pharmacists. Other experts favor keeping drug production and sales illegal but decriminalizing possession, as some foreign countries have done.

Here in the United States, four decades of drug war have had three consequences:

First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average. In part, that's because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate was roughly the same as that of other countries.

Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad. One reason many prominent economists have favored easing drug laws is that interdiction raises prices, which increases profit margins for everyone, from the Latin drug cartels to the Taliban. Former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia this year jointly implored the United States to adopt a new approach to narcotics, based on the public health campaign against tobacco.

Third, we have squandered resources. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug prohibitions. We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and imprisonment as on treatment. (Of people with drug problems in state prisons, only 14 percent get treatment.)

I've seen lives destroyed by drugs, and many neighbors in my hometown of Yamhill, Oregon, have had their lives ripped apart by crystal meth. Yet I find people like Mr. Stamper persuasive when they argue that if our aim is to reduce the influence of harmful drugs, we can do better.

Mr. Stamper is active in Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, an organization of police officers, prosecutors, judges and citizens who favor a dramatic liberalization of American drug laws. He said he gradually became disillusioned with the drug war, beginning in 1967 when he was a young beat officer in San Diego.

"I had arrested a 19-year-old, in his own home, for possession of marijuana," he recalled. "I literally broke down the door, on the basis of probable cause. I took him to jail on a felony charge." The arrest and related paperwork took several hours, and Mr. Stamper suddenly had an "aha!" moment: "I could be doing real police work."

It's now broadly acknowledged that the drug war approach has failed. President Obama's new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, told the Wall Street Journal that he wants to banish the war on drugs phraseology, while shifting more toward treatment over imprisonment.

The stakes are huge, the uncertainties great, and there's a genuine risk that liberalizing drug laws might lead to an increase in use and in addiction. But the evidence suggests that such a risk is small. After all, cocaine was used at only one-fifth of current levels when it was legal in the United States before 1914. And those states that have decriminalized marijuana possession have not seen surging consumption.

"I don't see any big downside to marijuana decriminalization," said Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology at the University of Maryland who has been skeptical of some of the arguments of the legalization camp. At most, he said, there would be only a modest increase in usage.

Moving forward, we need to be less ideological and more empirical in figuring out what works in combating America's drug problem. One approach would be for a state or two to experiment with legalization of marijuana, allowing it to be sold by licensed pharmacists, while measuring the impact on usage and crime.

I'm not the only one who is rethinking these issues. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia has sponsored legislation to create a presidential commission to examine various elements of the criminal justice system, including drug policy. So far 28 senators have co-sponsored the legislation, and Mr. Webb says that Mr. Obama has been supportive of the idea as well.

"Our nation's broken drug policies are just one reason why we must re-examine the entire criminal justice system," Mr. Webb says. That's a brave position for a politician, and it's the kind of leadership that we need as we grope toward a more effective strategy against narcotics in America.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.

 

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: June 13, 2009

 

 

 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/opinion/14kristof.html?_r=1

 

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Hacktivism and Engaged Fashion Design - Otto von Busch defends his thesis

Hacktivism and Engaged Fashion Design - Otto von Busch defends his thesis

 

What happens if a designer within the world of fashion encourages political activism? Otto von Busch describes a designer role that experiments with how fashion can be reverse engineered, hacked, tuned and shared among many participants as a form of social activism. On Friday October 24th 2008 he defends his thesis at the School of Design and Crafts, University of Gothenburg.

 

Otto von Busch's thesis, with the title "Fashion-able: Hacktivism and Engaged Fashion Design", consists of a series of extensive projects from fashion which aim to explore a new designer role for fashion. A role that experiments with how fashion can be reverse engineered, hacked, tuned and shared among many participants as a form of social activism. 

 

This social design practice can be called "the hacktivism of fashion", an engaged and collective process of enablement, creative resistance and DIY practice, where a community share methods and experiences on how to expand action spaces and develop new forms of craftsmanship.

Otto's research takes the practice of hands-on exploration in the DIY upcycling of clothes through open source fashion "cookbooks". By means of hands-on processes, the projects endeavour to create a complementary understanding of the modes of production within the field of fashion design. The artistic research projects have ranged from DIY-kits released at an international fashion week, fashion experiments in galleries, collaborative "hacking" at a shoe factory in Norway, engaged design at a rehabilitation centre in Estonia as well as combined efforts with established fashion brands.

To better understand this practice Otto uses parallels from hacking, heresy, fan fiction, small change and professional-amateurs, and examines how these examples can help widen the understanding of the design practice in fashion.

- These different fields may seem separated but they are characterized by a common approach towards practice, something which is examined in my own projects, says Otto von Busch.

The thesis has many possible points of entry and builds a non-linear framework by which the reader can draw diagonal interpretations through the artistic research projects presented.

- This approach is not about subverting fashion as much as hacking and tuning it, and making its' sub-routines run in new ways, or in other words, bending the current while still keeping the power on, says Otto von Busch.

He continues:

- The special skill of the designer is to understand how to bend the energies of fashion into modes of wider engagement – to help participants become fashion-able.

Friday October 24th Otto von Busch defends his thesis at the School of Design and Crafts, University of Gothenburg.  Examiner is professor John Wood, Goldsmiths, University of London. Committe of grades: docent Lisbeth Svengren, institutionen för designvetenskaper, Lunds University, phil drYlva Gislén, Dramatiska institutet, Stockholm and professorOle Lützow Holm, Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg.

 

http://www.hdk.gu.se/en/nyheter/2008/hacktivism-and-engaged-fashion-design-otto-von-busch-defends-his-thesis> 

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Death at the Holocaust Museum and the Degradation of the American Dialogue By Michael Rowe

 

Death at the Holocaust Museum and the Degradation of the American Dialogue

 

By Michael Rowe

 

 

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.

 

 Ann Coulter

 

 

 

Ann Coulter, the self-described "conservative Christian" right-wing talking head, is much on my mind as I contemplate the horrifying images that came out of Washington from the Holocaust Museum, where white supremacist James von Brunn opened fire in an attempted mass-murder of Jews. His killing spree was cut short by security guard Stephen Tyrone Jones who put himself in the line of fire and died so others might live.

I am remembering an October 2007 segment of the Donny Deutsch Show where Coulter asserted that America would be better off if everyone was Christian and that "the Jews" merely needed to be "perfected" through conversion.

Coulter has made her fortune by generating, fanning, and nurturing hatred and contempt for a variety of people, including liberals, Democrats, gays, foreign nationals, 9/11 widows, feminists, single mothers, Muslims, and any other group she could throw to her disenfranchised readership as shark bait.

To Coulter, referring to Jews as "imperfect" on a talk show hosted by an observant Jewish host must have seemed like just another day at the office. Coulter shook her blond hair and tittered, as though waiting to be found witty, charming, and adorably irascible. Oh Ann, you minx! You're just pushing everyone's buttons, aren't you? Shame on you, you dead-sexy fascist pin-up. Stop teasing. You don't really mean that. I mean, not really, right? Right?

Deutsch, clearly appalled, pointed out that the comment was not only patently absurd, but also hateful. Coulter giggled. A gold crucifix gleamed against her bony clavicle. "No," she said, "it's not hateful at all."

This week, nearly two years later, James von Brunn, driven by his own twisted version of Coulter's publicly-proclaimed perspectives regarding the "imperfection" of Jews, entered the Holocaust Museum in Washington and put them into action, with tragic and deadly consequences.

Much the same thing happened on May 31st when Scott Roeder entered the Reformation Lutheran Church during Sunday services and slaughtered abortion provider provider Dr. George Tiller. Media analysts continue to explore a possible continuum between Tiller's murder and FOX host Bill O'Reilly's well-documented on-air tirades against the doctor, whom he repeatedly called "Tiller the Baby Killer." O'Reilly broadcast his vendetta to millions and millions of FOX viewers already infected with evangelical superstitions and a horror of science, especially science as it applies to a woman's right to choose.

If O'Reilly had been a serious journalist or broadcaster instead of a sclerotic, chronically-aggravated right-wing rage pimp, he might have had the professional self-awareness or ethical sense to realize that he was putting George Tiller's life in danger over the more than 28 broadcasts in which he used Tiller's name. But O'Reilly, like, for Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and indeed Coulter herself (to name only the gratin of that particular food chain) is neither of those things.

As a group, they are the pop culture equivalent of necrotic carrion beetles, crawling with insectile determination from one infected open wound in the American psyche to another. The wounds include fear of race, fear of foreigners, fear of sexuality, fear of difference, hysterical religious fundamentalism, violent nationalism, and paranoia. They lay their eggs in the infected abrasion, then scuttle away. When the eggs hatch, disgorging rage and discontent, they start counting money.

When challenged on the inherently destructive nature of their enterprise, they invariably claim that their First Amendment right to free speech is being abrogated. Or, like Ann Coulter defensively does in those instances, they cite their place on the New York Times bestseller list. Or the ratings. In other words, since people buy it, watch it, or listen to it in huge numbers, it must have merit, and it must be right.

The difference between John McCain and Sarah Palin became clearest to me in the middle of the campaign last summer.

At a town hall meeting, McCain was confronted by an elderly woman who told McCain that she was a supporter of his because Obama was "an Arab." McCain was clearly uncomfortable, and it was patently obvious why. It had nothing to do with McCain's feelings about Arabs. It had to do with an old-school Republican accidentally moving the rock, and coming face to face with what actually lived beneath it. He recognized that the woman was making an unambiguously racist statement about his opponent, and he was mortified to be asked to answer it. Even though McCain famously and horribly bungled his answer ("No ma'am, he isn't. He's a decent family man.") I knew when he meant. He was addressing the intended racial slur and disavowing it, however badly.

In that moment, I felt deeply for my Republican friends who, on some level, must also be experiencing the embarrassment and discontent of recognizing that their party had been hijacked by racists and religious fanatics who derided education and achievement as "elitist."

Sarah "Screw the Political Correctness" Palin, on the other hand, seemed right at home. She marched into those same crowds grinning and winking, and "Yoo betcha-ing" like she was onstage at the Miss Alaska pageant. While her supporters waved watermelon slices and stuffed monkeys, Palin talked about who the "real Americans" were, and who was "palling around with terrorists." She refused to address the blatant racism of her fans, or address the obvious exploitation of Obama's middle name, Hussein, and the implication she herself was making with her "terrorist" comments.

She was, after all, playing to the accurately-named Republican "base," the same crowd to whom George Bush had sold his second presidential term by pandering to their darkest and most cowardly aspect. This time out it was fear of gay marriage and adoption, carefully tended fear of another 9/11, fear of more fallout from a war they still didn't believe he'd lied about.

One can almost appreciate the horrible honesty of the racists among the McCain-Palin supporters who were able to admit what the others obfuscated: that they didn't want a black man in the White House. Certain videos from their rallies are deeply disturbing. They showcase the seething racism of her most ardent followers.

History has already recorded their obsession with Obama's origins, his religious background, and his citizenship, which remains an obsession among them today.

Obama's citizenship was reportedly also something of an obsession for von Brunn, and likely very much on his mind when he walked into the museum and opened fire to make a statement about what "his" America ought to look like. I have no trouble imagining which radio stations he listened to, or which pundits best represented his baseline political ideology. And why. Even FOX's Shep Smith has said he's disturbed by the escalating virulence and menace of the anti-Obama emails the station is receiving.

There was a time when decency, even honor, was an essential part of the American dialogue in its most ideal form, and part of its very identity. There was a time when our culture would have recoiled in horror at the vituperation flowing unchecked from radios, televisions, and the Internet, instead of applauding it as "common sense," "free speech," or "mavericky," or "a spin-free zone."

There was a time when intellectual honesty was not considered unpatriotic; when compassion for, and understanding of, your fellow man was a sign of strength, not weakness. There was a time when the phrase Have you no shame? meant something, and the First Amendment was not used as toilet paper to wipe up the excremental verbal degradation of vulnerable segments of the American population. A time when it was expected that citizens would understand the difference between free speech and irresponsible speech. Somewhere along the line, a cancerous segment of American popular culture and media cunningly exploited the long-standing, honorable American "cowboy" motif and mentality. They grafted cruelty, divisiveness, and ignorance to it, making the two appear indistinguishable, and natural allies. And they are neither, or at least ought not to be.

There is no Environmental Protection Agency to measure hate pollution in national dialogue, and no mechanism in place to warn us when the poisonous rage spewed into the national consciousness by shock-jocks, poisonous television pundits, megachurch leaders, and oh-so-subtle politicians, has reached dangerously toxic levels.

No, there is only the result: widows, orphans, collective grief, and an absolute refusal on the part of our loudest, coarsest voices to take any responsibility for their part in the carnage.

 

Michael Rowe

Award-winning journalist and author of Other Men's Sons

Posted: June 11, 2009 01:53 AM

 

 

 

 

Read More: Ann Coulter, Barack Obama, Bill O'Reilly, George Tiller,Holocaust Museum, Holocaust Museum Death, Holocaust Museum Shooting, James Von Brunn, John McCain, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Politics News

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-rowe/the-holocaust-museum-shoo_b_214133.html

  

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Lena's Book of Mercy~~

Waiting for Marianne

I have lost a telephone
with your smell in it


I am living beside the radio
all the stations at once
but I pick out a Polish lullaby
I pick it out of the static
it fades I wait I keep the beat
it comes back almost asleep

Did you take the telephone
knowing I'd sniff it immoderately
maybe heat up the plastic
to get all the crumbs of your breath

and if you won't come back
how will you phone to say
you won't come back
so that I could at least argue

"Flowers for Hitler"

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A Paris Plan, Less Grand Than Gritty

A Paris Plan, Less Grand Than Gritty







President Nicolas Sarkozy invited 10 teams of architects to reimagine Paris as a city integrated with its suburbs and environmentally responsible. One team envisioned garden towers and parks in a suburb.

 

 

PARIS — Every president of France's Fifth Republic has had his Pharaonic project, by which he believes he will leave his mark on the capital and French culture.

François Mitterrand, a fierce Socialist known as the Sphinx, left the new French national library and, to continue the Ozymandias theme, the controversial glass pyramid in theLouvre. Jacques Chirac left the Musée du Quai Branly, an anthropological museum, with an argumentative design by the French architect Jean Nouvel.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, no slouch, wants nothing more than to leave behind "Le Grand Paris." In more than a year of discussions, there have been some spectacular ideas and drawings by 10 teams of famous architects, drawn by the president's invitation to reimagine Paris as a city integrated with its suburbs and responsible in its environmental footprint.

Antoine Grumbach imagines Paris stretching along the Seine to Le Havre and the sea. Roland Castro, whose team included a sociologist and a philosopher, proposed a 250-acre park circled by skyscrapers in La Courneuve, one of the grimmest of the poor Paris suburbs. Richard Rogersplans rooftop gardens and parks built above railway lines. Yves Lion sees Paris sprouting with fields and forests, with citizens able to cultivate their own vegetable patches, an unfortunate similarity to the necessities of Soviet cities.

The architects have provided the ribbons and the balloons, but few if any of the plans are likely to be carried out. Pressed by politics and financing, Mr. Sarkozy has concluded that he will reach for reduced goals that are grittier and essentially practical. The ambition remains the same: to try to bring about a significant improvement in the city's transportation and housing stock, stimulate economic development and break the stranglehold of an artificial "wall" around a relatively small city. The wall is represented by a roughly 22-mile circular highway that separates Paris from a "crown" of suburbs — legally separate cities — where many Parisian workers live.

Mr. Sarkozy has even given up on an effort to reorganize the government and incorporate some of these smaller towns into what really would have been a Grand Paris. A plan for local government reorganization he commissioned from former Prime Minister Édouard Balladur proved so unpopular with the mayors and local councils of the rest of Île-de-France, the administrative region that includes Paris and its suburbs, that the agile and realistic Mr. Sarkozy simply shelved it.

But that left Mr. Sarkozy with a problem. What would be so grand about his Grand Paris?

His answer was, simply, infrastructure. In a speech at the end of April, Mr. Sarkozy said he would leave the dreams of reform to another generation. He said that the state would provide around $50 billion for what he said were complementary proposals for extended subway service that would allow people in the suburbs to travel between them without having to enter Paris, improve existing and saturated subway and train lines, tie some of Paris's most marginalized and poor neighborhoods into the grid and finally connect all three Paris airports to efficient public transportation.

But construction is not expected to start until at least 2012, and it would take at least 10 years.

The regional council had already drawn up ideas for a circular subway line called the Arc Express, with an estimated cost of $8.4 billion, to connect the inner "crown" of suburbs.

But Mr. Sarkozy's idea is for a more extravagant automated subway line known as the Grand 8, because it both goes around Paris in a wider circle and also cuts through it, looking like a figure 8 on its side. Some joke that the Grand Infinity might be a better name for it, given the length, some 80 miles, the difficulty of acquiring the land and the cost, around $25 billion, including needed improvements and extensions to three existing lines.

While Mr. Sarkozy has concentrated on transportation, housing is another crucial component of the plan. Paris is already badly overcrowded, with its poorest minorities largely placed in big public housing projects in the outer rings or suburbs of the city. Still, with only 41 square miles in land (just 1.7 times the size of Manhattan) and a strict height restriction of 121 feet for buildings, there is a severe housing shortage.

To meet demand, the government and private industry are supposed to be building 70,000 housing units a year inside Paris, but in fact have been building only 35,000. Mr. Sarkozy has now backed the 70,000 annual goal as part of his plan, including 19,000 more public housing units. Officials have been talking about a public-private partnership to create new poles, or magnets, for development and housing, made possible by easy transportation and intelligent investment.

Skyscrapers are an inevitable part of the answer, despite extraordinary aesthetic and cultural opposition to them from many French, who like them in New York, Tokyo or Shanghai but detest the few that have been built in Paris. One reason is the architectural nightmare of the Tour Montparnasse, which is generally regarded now as a mistake.

The Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, already has courageously begun the debate over building skyscrapers on the edges of Paris and finally won the support of Mr. Sarkozy, who said he was not against building tall "so long as it's beautiful."

The economic crisis has created all sorts of difficulties in every big city in terms of financing, investment and empty office space. But the state is the dominant player in France, and the president is practically royal. The secretary of state for development of the capital region, Christian Blanc, said that the crisis "simply obliges us to think differently," adding that even in the private sector, "money for good projects, that exists."

As for the vision thing, Mr. Blanc said that "grand architectural gestures" would be an important "signature of the Grand Paris project." But he gave no specifics, saying that "they will be studied with local elected officials in the framework of existing projects."

There is another aspect to the plan. Mr. Sarkozy, who made a name for himself with some tough talk during the suburban riots of 2005, when he was the interior minister, is also moving to create a "Grand Paris of police." He is ordering up a super prefecture to coordinate all the police in Paris and the "small crown" of innermost suburbs — Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-St.-Denis and Val-de-Marne — that he failed to incorporate politically into Paris.

"Only 45 percent of delinquents live in the interior of the capital," he said. "Delinquents don't have borders, particularly those belonging to gangs."

It may be a long way from visions of rooftop gardens and urban forests, but it is good politics.

Jeanette Coombs contributed reporting.

 

By STEVEN ERLANGER

Published: June 10, 2009

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/world/europe/11paris.html?pagewanted=all

 

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Music Without Sound: A New CD That Has No Music, but Lots of Pictures

Music Without Sound: A New CD That Has No Music, but Lots of Pictures




From the start, there was something mysterious about Danger Mouse's latest project, "Dark Night of the Soul."

 

Word of it first came at the South by Southwest music festival in March, on a poster that simply listed the name Danger Mouse — the record producer and member of the R&B duo Gnarls Barkley — along with the singer-songwriter Sparklehorse and, among others, the director David Lynch. A YouTube video in Mr. Lynch's unmistakable style stirred interest but added no details.

It was classic teaser marketing. And yet when "Dark Night of the Soul" was finally unveiled a few weeks ago, it still left fans puzzled. The project, it turned out, is a large-format book-and-CD package that Danger Mouse was releasing by himself, with 50 photographs by Mr. Lynch intended as accompaniment to the album's 13 songs. But the CD is blank and recordable, and a sticker on the shrink wrap explains cryptically: "For legal reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will."

Bloggers and journalists speculated widely about why Danger Mouse, whose real name is Brian Burton, had withdrawn the music from the book. A statement on the project's Web site (dnots.com) blamed "an ongoing dispute with EMI."

In response, EMI issued a statement that offered no greater clarity but hinted at a negotiation: "Danger Mouse is a brilliant, talented artist for whom we have enormous respect. We continue to make every effort to resolve this situation and we are talking to Brian directly. Meanwhile, we need to reserve our rights."

In most cases this turn of events would signify defeat: an artist battles a record label, and his music vanishes down the memory hole. But in the peculiar way that Danger Mouse has built his career, "Dark Night of the Soul" seemed to be an oblique victory, in which failure at official business can generate notoriety and, ultimately, lead to success in other endeavors.

For fans the sticker's winking reference to illegal downloading — "Dark Night of the Soul," like most albums in the age of leaks, is widely if unofficially available free online — was amusingly familiar. Five years ago Danger Mouse released "The Grey Album," a mash-up that used unauthorized Beatles and Jay-Z samples and became a bootleg Internet phenomenon. The once-obscure Danger Mouse was instantly catapulted to fame, getting high-profile gigs producing Gorillaz and others; Gnarls Barkley, his group with the singer Cee-Lo Green, scored a No. 1 hit around the world with "Crazy."

"From 'The Grey Album' on, he has proven himself a master of improvisation," said Jeff Chang, author of the hip-hop history "Can't Stop Won't Stop." "He's really interesting tactically, in terms of trying to figure out how to position himself and still come out ahead."

In a telephone interview Danger Mouse said that he and Sparklehorse (whose name is Mark Linkous) had worked on "Dark Night of the Soul" for two years, with a plan to maximize creative input from everyone involved: they gave instrumental tracks to singers they liked — among them Iggy Pop, Suzanne Vega and Julian Casablancas of the Strokes— and asked them to add vocal parts however they saw fit.

"We'd say, 'We thought you might be great on this song,' but didn't tell them anything else," Danger Mouse said. " 'Just listen to the music, and see if you have any ideas — some lyrics, or some vocal melodies.' We trusted each person without having to guide them very much."

Neither EMI nor Danger Mouse would comment on the legal matter. But according to several people with knowledge of the situation, who would not speak publicly because the contractual matters are confidential, Danger Mouse's situation is most likely related to a long-term recording contract he signed early in his career with Lex Records, a British independent that later entered into a joint venture deal with EMI.

As part of that arrangement, EMI apparently ended up with global rights to certain subsequent recordings by Danger Mouse. But not all: Gnarls Barkley is signed to Downtown Records, with distribution by Atlantic. (Further complicating things, Tom Brown, the founder of Lex, said of Danger Mouse, "Ultimately he is signed to Lex Records." But he would not elaborate.)

Lately EMI and Danger Mouse have been engaged in contentious renegotiation talks, these people say, although no new agreement has been reached, and Danger Mouse has pulled the music from "Dark Night of the Soul" because he feared he would be in breach of contract with EMI if he released the music through any other outlet.

Danger Mouse said he financed "Dark Night of the Soul" himself: he paid for all recording sessions, Mr. Lynch's two-day photo shoot and the costs of printing the book. All artists involved worked without payment, he added.

"Dark Night of the Soul," with the blank CD, is available for $50 in a limited edition of 5,000 copies, and the music can be streamed at NPR.org. Mr. Lynch's photographs are on view at the Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles through July 11.

When asked, Danger Mouse entertained the idea that "The Grey Album" and "Dark Night of the Soul" were made more intriguing by the unorthodox way they were released. But he added that neither involved any intentional strategy to orchestrate controversy.

"I definitely knew that it was illegal," he said of "The Grey Album," "but I never thought it would be big enough for anybody to really care."

In an interview Mr. Lynch chuckled at the absurdity of releasing a CD with no music. He had been invited to contribute visuals to the project, he said, but was so taken by the concept that he ended up singing two songs. One, the title track, summarizes the album's haunted theme with a noirish piano part and a scratchy vocal that sounds like a lonely late-night radio transmission.

"The same way that visuals can come out, lyrics can come out," Mr. Lynch said. "You'd listen to the music, and then here comes the mood, and here come the lyrics, and away you go. It's like the Surrealists' kind of thing, where you trick yourself into coming up with something."

For his part, Danger Mouse said he was disappointed with the legal and financial complications of "Dark Night of the Soul." But he said he was pleased that what was always meant to be a small, arty project has been able to reach audiences unaltered, however strange the delivery method. And given the controversy around the project, which burnishes Danger Mouse's image as a subversive, it seems likely that the book will sell out eventually and earn back his investment.

"I'm just trying to break even with this, if that is possible," he said.

"There wasn't anything on the creative side that had to be compromised in order for this to come out," he added. "So on the one hand, the whole thing is kind of bittersweet, but at least on the creative side it's the way it's supposed to be."

 

By BEN SISARIO

Published: June 10, 2009

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/arts/music/11danger.html?pagewanted=all

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Rachida Dati: What Next for a French Meteor?

Rachida Dati: What Next for a French Meteor?

 

 

PARIS — The fall from grace of Rachida Dati, one of France's highest-profile female politician, is mostly told in one of two narratives: that she was the target of a Machiavellian coup, or a victim of her own political naïveté.

 

As Ms. Dati exits French politics for the more genteel environment of European Union lawmaking in Brussels and Strasbourg, the reality appears more complex — combining strands of immigrant achievement, gossip-page glamour and the rugged infighting of French politics.

One of 12 children born to first-generation North African immigrants, Ms. Dati made her journey from a tough social housing complex in Burgundy to control of the Justice Ministry and was held up as a sign that France was finally confronting one of its cultural demons and creating more opportunities for immigrants and their offspring.

Ms. Dati entered President Nicolas Sarkozy's center-right cabinet after he swept to power in 2007, arriving with a résumé full of achievement and an appealing public persona that turned the stuffy world of French politics on its head. She was, as the cover of Paris Match declared soon after the election, the "face of a France that is changing."

But instead of thriving, she suffered a swift and brutal decline. After a brief honeymoon period, she was derided for her overly glamorous image, which critics said undermined her credibility. At the same time, her style as political enforcer for Mr. Sarkozy grated on those she dealt with. She rankled the conservative judiciary as she pursued Mr. Sarkozy's mandate of revamping the judicial system.

All the while she was battered by enemies like Élisabeth Guigou, a former Socialist minister, who said recently that Ms. Dati had wasted her chances through "authoritarianism" and "incompetence," setting back the cause of immigrant advancement. Mr. Sarkozy reportedly gave his reluctant protégé the ultimatum in January, saying she could resign and become a European lawmaker, or face political exile.

Ms. Dati won a seat in the European Parliament elections on Sunday, and on Monday confirmed that she would leave the government, but left the timing up to Mr. Sarkozy.

"In a way, she's a victim," said Bruno Jeudy, co-author of the book "Sarkozy and his Women." "She was celebrated by Sarkozy in his first year and she was the No. 1 Sarkoziste in France.

"Maybe she was in too much of a hurry," Mr. Jeudy added. "She annoyed the ultraconservative sector."

Others have less sympathy.

"When you are in power, you have choices," said Christian Makarian, executive manager of L'Express, a weekly. "She chose to stress in her profile more the glamorous side, rather than her competency." For that, he said, she paid the price, also letting down young North African immigrants who had held her as a role model.

Ms. Dati declined requests for an interview. Her recent comments to the news media have focused on defending her record in France, where she remains an object of fascination.

Morad Aït-Habbouche, a close friend of 17 years and a television journalist, said he believed that she was the victim a concerted, xenophobic campaign.

"So much that's said about her, about her media image, has been rubbish," he said. "So many people just didn't want her to succeed."

Ms. Dati was the second child of a Moroccan father, a bricklayer and strict disciplinarian, and an Algerian mother. She excelled in studies at a local Catholic school and took a number of part-time jobs to help support the family and her university economics studies in Dijon.

Ms. Dati spent much of her 20's building contacts among France's powerful figures. "She wrote to all the decision makers: captains of industry, ministers, senior civil servants or even singers and journalists," according to a detailed study by L'Express. The tactic paid dividends. She worked at several prestigious companies like the oil giant Elf and the engineering group Matra.

In 1997, Ms. Dati changed course and studied law, encouraged by Simone Veil, France's first female minister. Ms. Dati became a magistrate soon afterward but continued her networking.

In 2002, she received her payoff when Mr. Sarkozy, then interior minister, appointed her as an adviser, after she bombarded him with missives.

During his election campaign, Mr. Sarkozy appointed Ms. Dati his spokeswoman, and after he became president he named her justice minister, making her the highest ranking woman of African descent to hold public office here as well as the first senior Muslim minister.

Her potential seemed limitless. But her dossier was a minefield; she was charged with reining in the sprawling court system and tackling decrepit jails.

She quickly moved to eliminate courts in cities around the country, obliging many members of the bar to find work elsewhere or travel great distances for their jobs. She also tried to impose Mr. Sarkozy's pledges for tougher sentencing, particularly on juveniles.

In reaction, judges' unions, court staff and lawyers rebelled, staging marches, strikes and other protests. Magistrates cited a long list of grievances against her, including her absence from crucial meetings and her rough and lengthy interrogations of them.

Laurence Mollaret, deputy president of magistrates' union, denounced Ms. Dati's "authoritative" and "brutal" manner. "There's been a real absence of social dialogue," she said.

Judges have also charged that Ms. Dati did little to alleviate problems in jails. In a scathing report issued in November, the Council of Europe, an E.U. individual rights' institution, said French prisons were dirty, overcrowded and run-down. This spring, some 4,000 guards went on strike in 120 of France's 194 jails in protest.

Still, her supporters argue that in her brief tenure she pushed through more legislation than previous ministers, and that it was inevitable that the long-debated changes would offend conservative magistrates.

Even as she pushed the legal changes Ms. Dati was becoming a fixture in society columns, appearing in magazines alongside stories about her love of haute couture. She was ridiculed by one magistrate as a "Barbie minister" and her approval rating slid.

In a now infamous photo-shoot, she adorned the cover of Paris Match, dressed in a sleeveless, figure-hugging, pink Dior dress, black stockings and stiletto-heeled black boots.

The birth of her daughter, Zohra, in January created more controversy. Her refusal to identify the father created ready-made material for the gossip sheets. More substantively, her decision to return to work just days after giving birth prompted international debate about maternity rights; she was in equal measure praised for her commitment and damned for undermining workplace rights.

By then, it appeared that Mr. Sarkozy's confidence had crumbled. Just as she returned, the president announced plans to abolish the position of investigating magistrates; in a sign that her influence was ebbing, those plans emanated from the Élysée Palace rather than the Justice Ministry.

As she prepares for her new life, many believe that E.U. politics are unlikely to satisfy Ms. Dati's ambition; her supporters think there could be a political reinvention.

Mr. Jeudy, the author, thinks that she could become mayor of Paris after 2014, where the center-right lacks a figurehead, or a French legislator. "It's in her hands now," he said, "Most people either love her, or loathe her. She's very polarizing. And in Paris, that can help you."

 

By MATTHEW SALTMARSH

Published: June 11, 2009

 

 

 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/world/europe/11iht-dati.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=all

 

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What are the most dangerous search terms on the Internet?

What are the most dangerous search terms on the Internet?

          

• Searches using "music lyrics" and "free" attract malicious software sites
• DeWalt: "We've seen a dramatic increase in malware"
• Dangerous topics include screensavers, free games and "work from home"

 

HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- If you like to search for "music lyrics" or "free" things, you are engaging in risky cyber behavior. And "free music downloads" puts 20 percent of Web surfers in harm's way of malicious software, known as "malware.".

A new research report by U.S.-based antivirus software company McAfee has identified the most dangerous Internet search words that places users on pages with a higher likelihood of malware.

The study examined 2,600 popular keywords on five major search engines -- Google, Yahoo, Live, AOL and Ask -- and analyzed 413,000 Web pages.

"Just in the past year, we've seen a pretty dramatic shift in what we call malware," David DeWalt, president and CEO of McAfee, told Richard Quest for CNN's Quest Means Business. 

"It went from a hacker in a basement, to organized cybercrime to now, literally, terrorism and other forms of organized geopolitical attacks," he said.

Categories that had the highest risk of run-ins with malware: screensavers, free games, work from home, Olympics, videos, celebrities, music and news.

 Riskiest terms: word unscrambler, lyrics, myspace, free music downloads, phelps, game cheats, printable fill-in puzzles, free ringtones and solitaire.

The study shows how cyber criminals are increasing in sophistication.

"We can have massive outages with a hacker in the basement -- we saw that recently with the 'Twitter worm,' a 17-year-old in his basement basically perpetrated tens of millions of (computer) outages, or we can see an organized attack bringing down infrastructure," DeWalt said.

Antivirus software companies lag behind latest developments by cyber criminals. "We've been way behind, that's true for the entire world, the global infrastructure of the Internet has grown dramatically -- 50 percent of the world's PCs are unprotected," he said.

Despite the increased risk, DeWalt doesn't believe there will be a "cyber Armageddon" causing widespread destruction of computers and Internet infrastructure.

"Last week, you saw President Obama in the United States talk about a major cyber-security initiative sponsored by the government, other governments are sponsoring this as well," DeWalt said. "I think we're learning this can happen, and if we get ahead of it, we can prevent it."

 

 

 

 

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