Bradan agus Salman

Chuala Léna agus mé scríbhneoir cáiliúil an tseachtaine seo caite. Chuaigh muid go dtí ar lar ina gCathair na hÄingeal. Chonaic muidsa Salman Rushdie ag an leabharlann lárnach ansin.

Go nádurtha, tá leabhar nua aige a plé. Ach, d'iarraidh muid ach a fhéiceail air ag ár cathair. Go fírinne, ní raibh breá "Na Veársaí 'Ghaire Ghalar Dubhach" go mór. Shíl mé go raibh sé ró-scaipthe.

Mar sin féin, bhi maith muid ag breathnú Rushdie. D'inis sé dúinn faoi an dith de chaint saor in aisce. Chuir sé i gcoinne 'rabhaidh spreagadh' agus géilleadh na chinsireacht san Eoraip 's Méiricea Thuadh.

Thít sé go leor aimnreachtaí. Mheas se go raibh Bob Dole an-leadránach. Chinn sé Bill Clinton an-deas. agus Seoirse Ö Chluaine an-dathúil, mar shampla...aon iontas.

Níos luaithe, d'ith bradan agus gnocchi ina bialann fineáil, "Industriel" ag 6th agus Grand. D'ól leann dubh-bainne ó Longmont i gColorado. Beidh muid ar ais ann nuair atá againn níos mó ama.

Salmon and Salman

Layne and I heard a famous writer this past week. We went to the downtown Los Angeles. We saw Salman Rushdie at the Central Library there.

Naturally, he had a new book to discuss. But, we wanted to go only to see him in our city. Truthfully, I did not love "The Satanic Verses." I thought it was too scattered.

Nevertheless, we liked watching Rushdie. He told us about the need for free speech. He stood against "trigger warnings" and capitulating to censorship in Europe and North America.

He dropped many names. He thought Bob Dole was very boring. He found Bill Clinton very charming and George Clooney very handsome, for example...no surprises.

Earlier, we ate salmon and gnocchi at a fine restaurant, Industriel, at 6th and Grand. I drank milk stout from Longmont in Colorado. We will return there when we have more time.

Ghrianghraf/Photo: Tá muid ag suí ar bhealach ar ais anseo! We are sitting a long way back here!

"A dunce or a rogue"

"The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue." So reasons Emma Goldman a century ago in "Anarchism: What It Really Stands For." I cite the preceding passage, for the context, as I read this last night, certainly brings to mind the fate of Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, and the progressive attempts in the Arab world to overturn crony-capitalism and party politics of neo-liberalism. And, yesterday's election of Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour Party leadership.

Even were the workers able to have their own representatives, for which our good Socialist politicians are clamoring, what chances are there for their honesty and good faith? One has but to bear in mind the process of politics to realize that its path of good intentions is full of pitfalls: wire-pulling, intriguing, flattering, lying, cheating; in fact, chicanery of every description, whereby the political aspirant can achieve success. Added to that is a complete demoralization of character and conviction, until nothing is left that would make one hope for anything from such a human derelict. Time and time again the people were foolish enough to trust, believe, and support with their last farthing aspiring politicians, only to find themselves betrayed and cheated.

It may be claimed that men of integrity would not become corrupt in the political grinding mill. Perhaps not; but such men would be absolutely helpless to exert the slightest influence in behalf of labor, as indeed has been shown in numerous instances. The State is the economic master of its servants. Good men, if such there be, would either remain true to their political faith and lose their economic support, or they would cling to their economic master and be utterly unable to do the slightest good. The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue.

Naturally, within the current context of liberalism, a more radical push from the left to challenge that status quo, and the blowbsck from the right-wing demagogues, the contests we see in Britain and America speak to discontent. Even Donald Trump castigated CEO pay today. There is an assault on the middle-of-the-road time-servers, lobbyists, and hacks in office, even if few voters apparently (reminds me of how many decry education but are just fine with their local schools somehow) throw them out of office. I've often lamented my residence in a gerrymandered Latino-Democrat region where incumbents play musical chairs if they face term-limits, or else stay cushioned in office perpetually. No challenger exists, and it's only a contest to see which new Dem will grab the unions, the developers, and the old-boy/girl network on the Eastside, City Hall, and Sacramento to cash in on a victory. Last Assembly had Lopez, Chavez and Gomez fight it out, they seemed indistinguishable.

My own predilections leave me detached. The circus attracts me as a spectator. But, ever since Reagan won and his policies effected the course of my college years and the start of grad school, I ponder how much distance there is between us and them. They beg for us like a nosy neighbor, coming back if every four years, and then leaving us alone for another four. We meanwhile look around and get on with our lives, forgetting them and vice versa. Post-Occupy I've delved deeper into anarchist and left-libertarian critiques. They match best my own perch, between socialism and individualism, favoring autonomy, not so-called panderers and pimps who pose as our representatives in our devolved, decaying plutocracy. I distrust politicians and I wonder about their schtick and spiels. Is Trump really off-camera the blustering rube, the caustic egotist, he plays? Sanders, at home, may be at least slightly less ticked off than he is when he runs through his stump speech the 876th time as the mikes catch him and the crowds cheer. As for Hillary, she seems embalmed, that "smile." Reading George Packer's "The Unwinding," I learned Joe Biden's rote go-to epithet is "f--dwarf."

As to their campaigns, today's L.A. Times reports that while Trump leads the remnant of the GOP that inhabits I guess the inner hinterlands, for the Dems rule all else in the Golden State under a system that has had super-majorities and veto-proof legislatures recalling the days of the Politburo, the news is also dire for Bernie Sanders. Hillary leads him by nearly double, and few "non-white" voters back him. While among independents he nearly ties her, liberals still lean for Clinton 2.0.

So, despite him barely leading in Iowa and New Hampshire, the news remains that he cannot so far break into a wider base of support. My wife and I agree on this. Goldman discusses the Socialist's attempts to work within the system so as to transform it. T-shirts for Bernie welcome a "political revolution." Such rhetoric unsettles my wife. While we for once unite in supporting him, we realize he has limited appeal; such slogans may turn off voters. When debates begin, I fear rather than Bernie's quixotic insistence on battling the issues and not her (although he attacks the GOP), that she will draw voters to suspect his calls for taxing Wall Street to fund colleges and overturning Super PACs that she shares along with Republican foes. Surely, she will whisper about spectral socialists.

She will also try to copy Obama's '08 strategy. Whisking the South away from Sanders with black support, to offset and override any gains Sanders can pick up in more liberal enclaves. She figures she will then amass a delegate lead to lock her into first place early. One reason the privilege we are told we have of voting for President matters less. The Electoral College and conventions dominate. Who we want as voters or who we can choose as individuals gets ignored by the institutional powers.

Some, yes, convince us that change can happen. The current President tried this, but it never fooled me. You can blame the impasses and failures of nerve on the disloyal opposition, but as Truman and my dad said, the buck stops here. As a kid during the Vietnam and Watergate era, I place no faith in those in charge. I realize I have helped elect Hillary's husband in '92, but that was my only 'success."
Even in '96, disgusted by his soulful eyes and butter-melting-in-the mouth poses when caught out, I registered Green as that party had qualified in '94 for the state ballot. In turn, discomforted by their endorsement of Cynthia McKinney in '08, and the narrow rules of California as to primary voting, I bailed out for the fastest-growing contingent in my state, the non-partisan "decline to state" roster. Even if as with Sanders in the Senate this sides with Dems usually, it gives me a bit more autonomy.

Many who I read lately reject voting at all. Yet I wonder how Citizens United will be overturned, student debt forgiven, foreign wars rejected, bankers taxed, and elections funded by the people unless legislative reform happens. Sometimes there are policies like marijuana, prison, felonies, schools, and discrimination that we can vote for in state initiatives. Although tainted, this legacy of the Progressive Era in California has led to progress. These aren't issues that direct action alone can solve. As for global warming and climate change, the fact both the GOP and HRC get "bundled" money from fossil-fuel firms as some of their largest "donations' speaks for itself.  Last week, Democrats defeated their own Californian bill to impose stricter environmental standards. "They are taking away our right to drive!" Such scare tactics swayed enough Dem pols away, fearing their Big Oil cash would dry up.

What politicians failed to do the past twenty years depresses me. If Al Gore had entered the White House, for all his foibles, he might have helped the cause of the Earth. Like stem-cell research, we have lost time for progress under religious ignorance, corporate connivance, and political stupidity. Can a Sanders or Corbyn do enough to overcome the Camerons or Clintons, the Trumps and Bushes?

Dan Balz compares (as I'd logged on to do) the image of disheveled Corbyn and rumpled Sanders. Two grey lefties at odds with their comrades, who hang on and scare the Tony Blairs and the DNC. The losses Labour recently faced in Britain to the Tories, however, do not seem to mirror those of the Dems here to their rivals. For, it's like living in Northern England in Southern California (let alone Northern!). The so-called liberal party does not face relegation to the minor leagues. What we all call "demographic shifts" leave much of the nation firmly in blue-state control, as the red-states shrink. Purple areas blossom where once red tints simmered. The shifts in British politics, and its complex parliamentary system, allow smaller parties too to survive in a way our bi-partisan prejudice refuses.

Greens, Plaid Cyrmu, SNP, and even the embattled, shrinking  LibDems may exert small tidal influence. I took a quiz a few months back that ranked me 87% with Sanders and in cahoots with the GP most. and the overseas equivalent matched me with the clown-car sized, post-election cohort of the LibDems. Here, that image is used for the 17 candidates on the GOP side. But Rick Perry dropped out already, whereas at this equivalent time before the '12 election he was first. Too few remember Rudy Giuliani was way ahead in "08 at this time too. So, despite the Clinton cash, perhaps there is a glimmer of hope for a more radical voice. And I don't mean Barack Obama. Jeremy Corbyn's rise will be one to watch, as two rogues ramble. As for the dunces, I leave them to the majority of voters.
Cartoon credit

Caption the flag

I entered the grounds where I work today. Small Stars-and-Stripes flags dotted the verges of the lawn, a scarce green in this hundred-degree heat wave in my drought-plagued State. I wondered if there were three-thousand or so, but it was probably a tenth of that. A security guard stood in the driveway, taking pictures of them on his cellphone, flags among the beds of pansies which are cared for, next to an empty fountain.

At the meeting I attended, the convener opened with a moment of silence. She commemorated those who had died "helping other people" that day, and those who were the victims. She did not mention the millions who have died before and after this Patriot Day, in the name of vengeance rained upon 19 perpetrators, "death from above," let alone the fatal fraction of that morbid total among those from hereabouts who volunteered or were sent to fight overseas. I teach, as I often report here, those returning from places far hotter than here, and of the state mentally or physically many are in. They are welcomed here to study, and often lauded.

I asked a few vets if they would recommend joining to others. I recall one who vehemently, if calmly, insisted against anyone he knew ever doing so. One of my best students now has in the past left class or been unable to attend as waves of gloom and inner pain leave him unable to motivate himself. I have taught amputees, those with plates in their head or their backs, and those unable to go to sleep. Some must move around, or sit in a way they are trained to cover a room and not turn their backs. Others find it difficult to stay still in a chair due to their injuries, or to focus and escape their demons.

I have been reading a lot of left-libertarian perspectives lately. They seem to echo my own concerns. We get caught up so rapidly in the rush to judge, the compulsion to curse, the joy of fulmination.

The juggernaut of aggression, the grievances, the culture of complaint drives us, even more than in 2001, as we rush to social media and smartphone cameras to upload our laments. As I heard, after a fine dinner of salmon at the nearby Industriel (sic), which I recommend by the way, Salman Rushdie spoke at the L.A. Public Library last night about the "freedom of expression" he noted the enemy in the West. Not Muslim immigration so much as "the victimizers acting as if they are the victims." Those who inflict offense claim they are offended. Trigger warnings create cowed citizens. He also compared intractable contentions such as Israel and Palestine to "contested narratives." Ones that cannot be reconciled. I feel increasingly estranged from those who claim to speak for and to lead us. I live in a nation whose "civic religion" of mottoes, pledges, and slogans disorients my own spirit.

As in the recession in 2008, I wondered post-9/11 if American triumphalism would subside. We all know that it did not. Obama replaced Bush jr., but the drone attacks and the trumped-up victories, as when he appeared to take credit for the Navy Seal raid that killed Osama bin Ladin, rogue scion of the dynasty our dollars supported as surely as they do the Saudis who escaped blame then heaped on Iraq and Afghanistan, also our former cronies in skulduggery, continued "our" Great Game abroad. 

The mandated duties managers insist upon, the erosion of the work-life balance, the wage stagnation, ecological devastation, the stifled possibilities that billions of us have who want to contribute to a better life for all creatures, not only our own (thankfully I guiltily admit today) air-conditioned nests. All these stir within us. During the day, we may be distracted, but how many at night wonder what 9/11 added up to, fourteen years on? My sons can barely recall it, and I now teach a generation that includes incoming students who would have been barely out of diapers on Sept. 11th, 2001. Soon enough, like the Civil War and Pearl Harbor, the San Francisco quake of '06 and the Shoah, we will lose the living links with dramatic rescues, heartbreaking recollections, and a scent of sudden death.

Until the next time. Living in Los Angeles, that may be natural or artificial. A new show, a pre-quel, takes place near me in El Sereno, a largely Latino neighborhood, as the Walking Dead zombies stir.
All deny it officially, but those more vulnerable or streetwise sense the media and political lies. I don't need to scrawl a highlighter to make the allusion. When George Bush at the time rose as he had to, reassuring us, he also encouraged us to get out there and spend, lest our national will falter and our economy--after all those Made in China flags were sold--sputter. My older son recalls reading a David Foster Wallace essay, as I had, about being with his relatives in Illinois the day after 9/11. Where did all those displays of patriotism, on fabric, fluttering from cars and from porches, come?

Like the once-ubiquitous "three-peat" {TM} Lakers pennants from cars, you rarely see the national flag flown. It's intriguing that the "NorCal" contingent seem to have popularized the State's Bear Flag. I always liked it, even if the forty-day or so California Republic was more akin to a (right-wing) libertarian attempt at getting back at los Californios than a true-sons-of-liberty attempt at equality. The poor grizzly on it is the only one left, as the "expansion" obliterated is as surely as dodo and passenger pigeon. No flag seems perfect. I have a liking for a few in my magnet collection at work, and I admit I display Quebec out of a sneaking liking for its stubborn separatism, and New Mexico for its Zia sun's simplicity and beauty; as a kindergartner my favorite reading was, precociously, a booklet Flags of the World given away by a bourbon company. Maps and flags, yes, divide us, but I remain fascinated by both manifestations of the divide and conquer, cheer for the home team, school spirit that deep within us is so difficult even for those who strive for equality and liberty to overcome.

"Every innocent person affected by the bombs we drop, the aid we provide to oppressive governments, the injustices we condone, becomes another potential terrorist. Save lives, overseas and at home—take your power out of the hands of the politicians and the terrorists they raise. Let them know they can't count on your silence." "Your Leaders Can't Protect You But They Can Get You Killed"  This 2006 statement (click for pdf) closes by quoting Tom Paine: “It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.” Image: "There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people." Howard Zinn.

Unshackling the liberal arts

Chelsea Manning urges: "Read everything. Absorb everything that is out there and act as your own filter. Hunt down your own answers to questions. This is the only advice that is actually worth anything. If you don't read these things yourself, then you can't say that you truly understand what humanity has done, and where we are going. We can't spend our lives getting spoon-fed all of our information every day and then expect to understand our world. Only then will you understand that people are still hurting and dying in the world around us." In this Paper interview, I suspect his fervent embrace of transhuman cyber-utopia, urged on by "Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst; design duo Metahaven, aka Daniel van der Velden and Vinca Kruk; and Web-activist Jacob Appelbaum." As the introduction explains: "Together, they weigh the strictures and possibilities not just of government, but of technology, culture and gender." No surprise, given Manning's transition from Bradley. I am not as confident as these enthusiasts that more tech equals more following one's bliss. Manning and confreres eagerly anticipate that tech will unshackle us all. Like her, I've seen a lot.

When I started teaching "Technology, Culture, and Society" to my students, all tech and business majors, in 1997, we used a textbook. Microsoft had barely moved from 3.1 to Windows 97, long since a relic. I relied on written notes, an overhead after I typed them, a whiteboard to highlight them, and my own exams to test my students' comprehension. We chose, locally, our text. Later, as colleagues joined me to teach this course, I lobbied successfully for an option for each of us to use our own current events materials and historical documents, to keep ever-changing content relevant.

Those teaching this course thrived. My colleagues enjoyed tailoring materials to their own expertise and the interests of their students. As tech changed and events flowed, so the curriculum for this course changed. Each term, I'd revise my readings into a packet, and tinkering with syllabi was a joy. 

As with Manning, I resist being spoon-fed.. Like processed food, some packaged contents seem appealing, but repeated reliance on lesson plans weakens the recipient and infantilizes the dispenser. I relished, when I chose to teach college and so to earn my Ph.D. first, a career that rewarded liberty.

About a decade ago, that freedom ended. A top-down administration took over. Our campus lost any autonomy. We were told all campuses had to use the same books, follow the same lectures, and conduct the same exams. That way, somehow it was reasoned, students could move between campuses, and then the emerging online mode, seamlessly. Also, we were all monitored as in turn we monitored our students, via a proprietary course platform. Designed by a major academic publisher, it guaranteed we selected its titles first, and those we liked more, even if we could not choose them anymore, were abandoned. Faculty had little input; we were told if we wanted to have a say, we ourselves should design the courses. But what worked for me onsite, a term now that along with landline entered the language to differentiate old from new "modalities" of communication and data transfer, did not work even for my colleague teaching the same course. I valued most our autonomy.

A year ago, we hosted a Career Day for students. I attended and took the same quiz as they did. After narrowing down the options from dozens I found the one that matched me best as #1: autonomy.  As the outlier at an institution where everyone teaches and majors in fields not liberal arts, I may have self-selected myself out of the herd. Apparently, engineers, accountants, and managers follow orders.

I now try to adjust to the new system. Systems are in place that track all of us, when and where we log in and out. A Panopticon. Still, I alternate my own materials, showing videos and generating discussion in-class that then follows through to that mandated online. This is a "capstone" course building on past humanities and social science courses, but these dwindle. "My" literature course, the only one left after the film and science fiction electives were oddly cut--given what I have found the natural interests of visual learners and techies--keeps getting cancelled for lack of interest, tellingly.

The technology text may enchant some, but I generate lessons out of venerable vignettes or late-breaking news. I share them and I elicit them. Gradually, some try to speak up for themselves. Students start to learn from each other, rather than only my lectures. I teach fewer hours in front of a class but many more online. I divide my time between two sites now, and also I must teach online. Those courses enroll double or triple my onsite ones, and the workload is exponentially far higher. I lack the limited modification permitted me onsite, and the syllabi and rapid online pace are daunting.

I reflect on this as again I prepare to teach, the most taught of all my courses, once again. I estimate thousands by now perhaps went through it, and after nearly twenty years surely as many students have taken this than even my composition courses? I used to teach it every session, and sometimes twice. Schedules enabling online enrollment decrease its frequency, but I do like hunting for new videos and I often glean from Facebook and the L.A. and N.Y. Times tech articles and lively links.

One of the supervisors from the top visited us recently. I told her of my experiences after a decade of imposed standardization. I concluded by urging that she and her cohort "trust us enough to teach."

How my plea was received I am unsure. I used to hear from my directors that "they would keep such-and-such in mind" before getting back to me. When they rarely did, I wondered how they forgot. Now into my third decade of college teaching, I come to understand what has been left unsaid.

It can be a grind teaching the same courses over and over, now in only eight weeks, sometimes with no pause between terms. My estimation of self-motivated and grassroots design become all the more embedded as I age, and as I keep at it. In every creative way I can, I long to make my courses personal, and designed not to trap students or myself in a mold, but to liberate us for the humanities.
(Photo credit: search for "autonomy" found this ironic image and slogan c/o HP's latest acquisition.)
(P.S. Thanks to Anthony McIntyre at The Pensive Quill for sharing this on his fine site, 9-14-15.)

Surplus Labor + me

Judy Cox, explaining Marx's theory in International Socialism (Summer 1998), a SWP magazine, concludes "As alienation is rooted in capitalist society, only the collective struggle against that society carries the potential to eradicate alienation, to bring our vast, developing powers under our conscious control and reinstitute work as the central aspect of life." I write this on Labor Day.

I don't want waged work to be my life's core. Anarchists encourage us to rethink this learned dependence. Mutual aid, voluntary organization, no demands to serve supervisors for corporate gain certainly appeal to my instinct. I want to produce creative work that I could exchange for others' goods and services, rather than a capitalist regime. But few of us "mature" folks have the stomach for dumpster diving or the gumption for petty theft. As I spend so much time and effort at my monitored posts, online and onsite, I reflect on how my occupation incorporates surveillance and management techniques that, in Marx's era, were the domain of the factory (or the prison as Foucault reminded us) rather than higher education. I am not idealizing the dispiriting system that started with Gradgrind, the dissertation and the professoriate. Still, earlier decades last century afforded some space for liberal arts, not all STEM. With digital data, a lurch has accelerated since Cox wrote this. The union where I work was "made redundant" before I was hired. This was a topic nobody confided in to me; I sensed, sub rosa, PTSD.

Lukacs proved as prescient about this loss of limited liberty as higher levels of the workplace became more standardized. In History and Class Consciousness, he pinned down the metamorphosis: "In consequence of the rationalisation of the work-process the human qualities and idiosyncrasies of the worker appear increasingly as mere sources of error when contrasted with these abstract special laws functioning according to rational predictions. Neither objectively nor in his relation to his work does man appear as the authentic master of this process; on the contrary, he is a mechanical part incorporated into a mechanical system. He finds it already pre-existing and self-sufficient, it functions independently of him and he has to conform to its laws whether he likes it or not.^34"

Cox cites Harry Braverman's 1974 Labor and Monopoly Capital to document this deskilling of white collar jobs and to a situation where managers have a monopoly of control over the production process: 'The unity of thought and action, conception and execution, hand and mind, which capitalism threatened from it beginnings, is now attacked by a systematic dissolution employing all the resources of science and the various engineering disciplines based upon it'.³² Conditions of work, from the length of the working day to the space we occupy, are predetermined: 'The entire work operation, down to its smallest motion, is conceptualised by the management and engineering staff, laid out, measured, fitted with training and performance standards - all entirely in advance'.^33"

This control increases, as Edward Snowden warns. “I don’t want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded.” — “Edward Snowden: ‘The US government will say I aided our enemies,’” July 8, 2013

“A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that’s a problem because privacy matters; privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.” “Snowden Sends Christmas Message To USA,” Dec. 25, 2013. (More quotes here.)

Certainly this (de-)evolution has long been charted. Reading Marxist analyses of how my workplace has altered over the past generation, their reports dovetail with Peter Fleming's 2015 study. This London-based professor of business and society plots in The Mythology of Work, in his apt subtitle, "How Capitalism Persists Despite Itself." But where Fleming seems to depart from the Marxian critique may be in his updated critique of neo-liberal economics and management. Diverging from such as Cox who wishes to restore work as the ground for our purpose, only under our control, Fleming cautions us against embracing those who make work's "impudent needlessness" rather our "basilar necessity" out of "moral rectitude." (22) He also reminds us that "anti-work" arguments based on how the work day is stretched out to eight hours when we can do our task, earn enough for our needs, and go home in a fraction of that day will not satisfy today's capitalists. They don't present us with "finite tasks" to be checked off at our own pace. They offer jobs with "forever multiplying demands." (8) Not for only productivity and profit but one's "display" of "protracted submission" to work's ritual results. Surplus toil increases when the phone and P.C. may call us in at any moment. We are human capital, so managerial emphasis weighs accordingly on not the adjective but the noun. Fleming accounts for why meetings proliferate and bosses summon us to be seen, power plus profit.

Unfortunately, as my review elaborates, Fleming offers solutions as distant as those of some in my current reading of left-libertarians. That is, I agree with and I aspire to many of them, but as my duty is to pay bills, to keep my family fed, sheltered, and schooled, escaping tonight to fulfill my bliss is not an exit option. I also agree, that we start towards our dreams by re-constructing daily reality.

Bryce Colvert writes in The Nation, after revelations of the driven culture of Amazon staff, how we are trapped in this rapid pace of production. "It speaks to an inability to say no. And in the face of that disempowerment, we may be telling ourselves extreme demands are in fact voluntary choices. After all, it feels better to think of time spent in front of a computer well into the night as something done in the service of passion than in the service of someone else’s bottom line." More stress, longer hours, no increase in pay, stagnant wages for decades, work-life broken boundaries: we are the 99%.

Mark Blake's "Pretend You're in a War: The Who & The Sixties": Book Review

While Mods and The Who inevitably join together, the band's ties to modernism, in art and culture, have not received the in-depth attention they merit. Mark Blake incorporates many years of interviews with Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Roger Daltrey, adding material gleaned from multimedia and previous books on the band. As an editor at both Q and Mojo magazines, and a biographer of Queen and Pink Floyd, Blake presents a solid study. While thwarted by the tendency of Townshend to tell one story to one journalist and another to another scribe a few years later, and while complicated by the reticence of Entwistle, the demise of Keith Moon and the determination of Daltrey to get his side of the record straight (all four sometimes at odds with other bandmates and witnesses) the band members invigorate Blake's narrative. They were a fractious four who insisted on autonomy even as they combined their talents to make rousing music. This offers a readable and accessible consideration of the band's origins, its tensions early on and its struggles as fame took over.

Blake treats the formative years of the band, their early musical ambitions before the band and their early members, especially drummer Doug Sandow, who were edged out before Moon was recruited. The detail here surpasses other treatments I have read, so those less obsessed by history may find the research too meticulous. Fans may argue for its necessity; it exposes the Who's deep London roots.

Townshend's tutelage at Ealing Art School under Gustav Metzger, known for action painting, and Roy Ascott, known for cybermetrics and confrontation, earns welcome inclusion; I wish more had been given over to these impacts on the guitarist's formative years. Pete embraced a liberating lifestyle along with the music. He plunged into London's swirl of art, books, and films as part of this cultural upheaval. Again, his prescient immersion into home taping and mechanical recording techniques is notable, and deserved more depth here; Pete mastered intricacies of production rapidly.

Despite some production oversight being left to the band's managers, the spirited pair of East End-bred Chris Stamp and Oxbridge-tutored scion and heir to a classical music pedigree, Kit Lambert, Townshend took much of the band's control away from Daltrey. Relegated to the mike, as his confidence grew, Roger became a powerful, more nuanced vocalist. This took years, as his wish to guide the band competed against Townshend's technical skills and formidable ego. But Daltrey by decade's end channeled Pete's lyrical gifts and vulnerable sensibility into his own cocky, strutting and preening presence. The book's title comes from Pete's attitude when the Mod models took the stage.

While their managers contended, while the guitarist and singer bickered and fought for leadership, so the stoic bassist, John, and the manic drummer Keith, sought their share of the Who's spotlight. The band ascended quickly into the top ranks, but preceded by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks, The Who had to catch up to talented peers and rivals. The Kinks especially competed with The Who sonically and lyrically from the mid-1960s on, and Blake documents this contest well.

The mythic Mod connection was pushed more by management and media, as Townshend longed to speak to his fans from that cohort, but the Mods themselves never lasted very long. "'A powerful, aggressive little army' with its mysterious dress code, music, dances and semiotics" sums up the unity of The Who and Mods. Yet equally crucial were the art school lessons Pete learned from modernism.

Mentors such as Ascott, Metzger and Helmut Gorden (the most eccentric of many contenders) merit mention, and Blake notes their suggestions to an eager student. Pete merged pop art into the classical tastes of Lambert. He integrated Henry Purcell and music-hall into three-minute ditties, often singles, which conveyed "black humour and sexual perversion" as "cameos, essays of human experience."

The "visual gimmick" accidentally invented at Harrow's Railway Hotel (evoked lovingly) when Pete smashed his guitar led to a routine. Keith destroyed his kit, Roger lassoed his microphone, John stood stock still on the side. Pete loved and hated this. His frustration at rock-star poses led to his own changes, in his lyrics, his music, and then his attire, as he chose before decade's end his workmanlike white boiler suit and Doc Martens as onstage fashion, contrasting with his three colorful bandmates.

Keith, under Lambert's sway, found pills, expensive champagne and excess inviting. John succumbed to drink and drugs, if in a quiet, self-critical manner. His musical talents shone in the band, but not enough compared to the main songwriter. John longed for his ideas to be accepted more by the band, which under Pete's dominance roused Roger's understandable resistance. Unlike The Beatles circa 1966, one senses The Who did not close ranks out of friendship  so much as necessity, when songs had to be assembled, and tours had to be endured, to pay the bills that the lavish lifestyles of the band required. Blake leaps from the band members getting by in flats or living with their parents to mansions, luxury autos (more than one meeting a quick demise), and conspicuous consumption with barely any transition. Perhaps the band's entry into the upper ranks of British rock happened that fast.

What wearied The Who, barely into their career, was the pace they had to keep to stay on the charts, on tour, in the studio. 1965-1966 as recounted here resembles the last stages of The Beatles. At least, unlike that foursome or the Stones, the machinations of Allen Klein to take over The Who's finances were fended off by Lambert, Stamp and Townshend. Yet, the band by the close of 1966 lacked continuity or consistency in their releases; the experimentation of Jimi Hendrix, Cream and Pink Floyd signaled an era far from Mods vs. Rockers. Pete's "story-songs" struggled at times to chart.

By then, the drug culture which consumed the Mods had soured for Pete. He distanced himself from the scene, even as he loved spending money and acting out his artistic ambitions. This bifurcation helped his music, however. His decision to turn to Meher Baba is well-known, but it did, as Blake shows, ease Pete's egotistical compulsion. He appreciated the awareness of the damage done by his insistence on pushing limits and refusing to listen to the wisdom of his comrades. That drive enabled Townshend to rise above his peers and to reign as a young eminence, but it also aroused his disgust with the contradictions a rock celebrity's career represented, if that star spoke for pure intentions.

Meanwhile, John Entwistle connived, sometimes with a Keith bent on hotel-room smashing, while Roger gave up Dippity-Do. He groomed a leonine mane atop his buckskin vest and rugged, tanned physique. Among a homely band, Roger stood out. Despite or due to his short stature, he grew into the role that Pete and he had worked out, as the confident voice for Pete's torments and triumphs.

Blake regales readers with many familiar stories. Pete's versions, whether set down in his 2012 autobiography or as venerable, conversational anecdotes, can differ with each other as well as with bandmates. Roger gets his own words in, with similar contradictions now and then. The truth of Keith's legendary Holiday Inn debacle in Flint, Michigan, or what song Jimmy Page did or did not play on, may never be known, but it's fun following the narratives as these moments enter rock star lore. Blake strives to keep straight who said what to whom and when. This accuracy enhances this book's value. (A valuable archive, although it may have appeared too late in 2014 for consultation, is not cited: Mike Segretto's The Who FAQ. Otherwise, Blake blends smoothly many standard sources.)

The albums themselves gain short shrift; track-by-track commentary is not Blake's intent. He emphasizes the band's nature more than their recordings, although Lambert's suggestions get due credit, as does the input of Roger, John and Keith to what seems soon after the start Pete's band.  Blake depicts vivid scenes: touring with Herman's Hermits, sparring at Monterey with Jimi Hendrix, making money from and losing even more for Track Records. The "financial profligacy" of the Who grew as troubled, feckless Lambert gave in to the addictions which would eventually consume first Keith and much later John. This hedonism met with Roger's disdain and Pete's ambivalence. Amidst hippie excess, the guitarist "felt like a workman in a lunatic asylum, come to fix the plumbing." But both Pete and Roger celebrated the onstage energy of the band, which reached its peak, in the studio and in concert, as ornamented productions on Tommy warped into massive assaults, performed live.

Even muddy Woodstock worked, despite three-quarters of the band accidentally on acid. Shunted aside to open their set at 4 a.m., luck came their way. They started "See Me, Feel Me" as dawn broke.

Blake ducks out as the story gets good, for the decade ended before the band sustained or perhaps surpassed its 1969-1970 breakthroughs in albums and on tours. Blake provides a brief coda summing up the next decade, but one closes this narrative hoping for the author to return, and to follow this with a complete look at the next seven or eight years. The book ends in 1970, not 1969. But as many claim along with the author, "The Sixties" did not begin until nearly mid-decade. That period of creativity and chaos arguably ended nearly ten years after The Who as we know them assembled, to make their unsteady climb to near or at the top of British rock. There, they won their war, amid very strong competition, during what remain the best years of that music, and more, as this book proves. (In edited form, to Spectrum Culture; as is above, to Amazon US 3-1-15.)

Pete Townshend's "Who I Am"" Audiobook Review

I heard this all the way through the acknowledgements, where Pete thanks his editors for assisting in cutting this down from 750 to 450 pages. As it is, it certainly abounds in tiny detail, drawn from Townshend's archives and journals kept for many years, as well as, I am sure, anecdotes with which he has regaled many fans for decades. I liked his genial presence, and listening to his London accent energizes what can be at times a slow narrative. He tends to chuckle or chortle a lot as he tells his tale. This can annoy sometimes, as when one sounds self-satisfied for being clever, but it also can be endearing. Over 17+ hours spent in Pete Townshend's company, not only The Who come alive, but his childhood, art school in Ealing, his schoolboy friendship with John Entwistle, and the hidden truths behind a troubled upbringing and his parents' own discontent. All this looms in his adulthood.

It's rousing to hear of Keith Moon's "liquid drumming" and John's "loquacious bass" driving the band in their Maximum R+B period, capped by Roger Daltrey's "howling like a black prisoner." Certainly, Pete loves his bandmates, and those who preceded The Who get their fair mention too. So do hundreds of others, as mentors, rivals, managers, staff, engineers, producers, friends, lovers, and fans, as Pete takes pains to credit many who made him and the band able to pursue "the best day job ever."

He shares the stories one expects. But some of the albums with the original lineup get but passing mention, such as "Sell Out" and "Who By Numbers;" much attention on the other hand is expended unsurprisingly on "Tommy" and "Quadrophrenia" in their best-known as well as subsequent iterations in concert, in film, and as musical theatre. In fact, I lost track of their variations, as on these and other solo and band projects, Townshend keeps returning to them as his skill and the technical equipment evolve, and he immerses himself perhaps like none of his peers into the possibilities of computing.

This leads him into one well-publicized run-in with the police, and he explains his side carefully. You will come away more clearly understanding what Pete set out to investigate, and the mistake he made. He also is forthright about his long addictions, his troubled marriage and affairs, family life,  and his determination to assist those less fortunate by charities and performances. This material again can weigh the telling down in its pace, but it's only fair to him that he balances his most famous period with his later life. Still, for all his enthusiasm about boats, he offers a lot of minute description.

All in all, I enjoyed hearing this, and I probably would not have if another reader recited this book. You get a truer sense of the intellectual, irascible, and introverted sides of this performer, who out of the limelight appears to have relished solitude (in his many homes), but who for the sake of his band mates and his fans (and perhaps The Who's accountants and labels), made the shows and tours go on. (Amazon US 4-21-15 and 6-26-15 to Audible.)

Mike Segretto's "The Who FAQ": Book Review

The Who Sell Out ranks in my top three favorite albums. I took my first girlfriend to the film adaptation of Quadrophenia when it opened in Hollywood in 1979. I return to their music, especially 1967-1978, for a boost not matched by what I find the overplayed output of the Beatles or Stones. But, as with any other band I admire, I recognize their pomp and their bombast, their egos and flaws. Yet, I continue to admire them. This balance reflects in another fan's tribute, and over three-hundred and fifty pages, Mike Segretto's The Who FAQ: All That's Left to Know About Fifty Years of Maximum R&B remains very even-handed. He praises the band's many triumphs and lists their failures.

Throughout, he sustains a spirited tone. I read this narrative with unflagging interest. Segretto discusses the recordings, the claims of the band, the facts calculated, and the rumors circulated. He analyzes the data, he has listened to every cover version and seen every snip of extant footage, and he reports on it every imaginable aspect of the Who in an educational and entertaining manner. Thirty-five topical chapters, many originating on his Psychobabble website, feature not only his own quarter-century of research, but input from fans who participated in online polls to vote on the band's most overlooked 1960s and 1970s tracks, or the best of the Who members' solo albums.

When I started this, I feared a fanatical tribute in gushing fashion. Instead, in three sittings (it would have been two if I had not had to go to work), I raced through this steady and thoughtful treatment. As many readers will be aware of the basics of "the world's greatest rock and roll band", I will focus this review on representative portions which revealed fresh insights or surprising information, to me as a follower if not a fanatic. The distinction is crucial, for while this will serve as a reference able as Segretto advises to be dipped into at any chapter, reading it in succession deepens the book's impact.

Taking in the contents, cross-references hint at past and future connections, and greater appreciation of the complicated tensions within the band and among those who mythologized or demonized the Who display Segretto's calm judgment of the Who's potential realized, and opportunities squandered.

Surprises await. Early on, singer Roger Daltrey chose the replacement for the late Keith Moon, drummer Kenney Jones ([Small] Faces), at a seance, guided by Keith's disembodied voice. Or so he claims, in one of many tall or possibly apocryphal tales this book reports. On the last album Moon contributed to, 1978's Who Are You, the cover famously featured him straddling a metal chair stenciled "Not To Be Taken Away". We learn that this pose, rather than any eerie prophecy (speaking of seances and spirits), more practically if depressingly had hid Moon's considerable "gut" from view.

Pete Townshend, launching high with his windmill power chords played on his guitar, popularized for rockers worldwide Doc Martens. He chose them so they'd protect his toes on landing, after they gave him the extra bounce needed, both from their patented soles. Image mattered for this band, and some of Segretto's best moments come when he explicates how their album covers, dress sense, and media savvy combined to deliver a consistent message. Keith's R.A.F. target shirts, Pete's Union Jack coat (and later more workmanlike white boiler suits to allow efficient guitar playing if as bold a presence on stage), Roger's leonine mane and buckskin wear, and stoic bassist John Entwistle's morbidly odd skeleton suit or flashy attire all accentuated on video and in concert their characteristic personae.

Therefore, each of this fractious foursome stood out. They (like the Beatles) closed ranks against outsiders, but they (like the Beatles again) often contended amongst themselves as to direction. Segretto does not make many parallels to the Beatles or Stones, but the Who sold itself as being a quartet with distinctive types, on vinyl and in person. Segretto shows how from their childhoods, each chose to tinker with instruments or try out attitudes contributing to their characters in the band.

"Roger the tough guy, Keith the lunatic, John the closet romantic, and Pete the spiritual seeker." They were modified by manager Pete Meaden during their early stint as the High Numbers into Mods, but Segretto proves this was a eager manager's choice rather than a philosophical commitment by the members. While they grew rapidly beyond limits of both "maximum R&B" and Mod, that slogan stuck and its iconography endured; the appeal of Quadrophenia throughout the 70s sparked a Mod revival and ensured that unlike many 60s "classic rock" bands, the Who were liked by punks.

After all, the Who courted the public less avidly than did cuddly Beatles or the smirking, sexy Stones. The Who "were notoriously negative, combative menaces who spoke openly about their drug use and sang songs about transgender children or masturbation". "I'm a Boy" and "Pictures of Lily" featured among stunning singles in the mid-60s which dazzled with their lyrical daring and musical shifts. These ambitions carried the band rapidly, despite a late start on record as part of the British Invasion, into the top ranks. As with most music back then, their songs may have imitated their forebears, rivals, and colleagues, but as the introduction here by Dave Davies of the Kinks attests, these British musicians shared an affectionate spirit of competition, pushing song limits in terms of themes and styles. In turn, as a deft section documents, later bands incorporated elements of the Who into their own innovative songs. For instance, Segretto hears in "Sunday Bloody Sunday", "New Year's Day", and "Pride (In the Name of Love)" by U2 musical and lyrical echoes of "Let's See Action", "Join Together", and "Relay", some of the groundbreaking singles released by the Who a decade earlier.

A chapter on covers of Who tunes reveals Segretto's keen ear. Such influence can transcend cover songs. The Soundtrack of Our Lives, a clever Swedish group who can channel the spirit of the Who's golden era without slavishly imitating them and worthy peers, may well be the "greatest cover band ever to play original material". As for influence, Johnny Lydon of the Sex Pistols was director Franc Roddam's first choice to star in Quadrophenia; sadly he was rejected after the distributor balked at the insurance it figured would be needed to protect him. The Who did invite its own menace.

As for anxiety, the band's own excess found them often at odds with one another, given each of their tetchy temperaments. Segretto maps out each member's relationship to the other three, and this goes beyond the usual Roger vs. Pete depictions peddled by the press and probably the band themselves. Segretto calls out members who in interviews often have trafficked in their own mythmaking, and as with Roger claiming that Jimmy Page played on "I Can't Explain", Segretto even corrects the band.

Such expertise proves endearing rather than annoying, for the author maintains a command of the material and tone. Dealing with the decline of Moon, the infidelities of Entwistle, the irritation of Daltrey, or what for discretion regarding Townshend I will refer to as related to the sting titled Operation Ore (details can be found herein or online), he handles sensitive material adroitly. Illustrating the legacy of the band by their pop culture references, he uses a 2000 Freaks and Geeks episode to show its appropriate musical and script use as "reflecting the alienation, identity crises, fraught adolescent sexuality, and profound desire for love and acceptance" within the band's core.

While a few flaws surfaced (Davies makes an elementary grammatical mistake in his introduction; the Union Jack does not use in its design "Ireland's St. Andrew's" blue but St Patrick's red "saltire"; and I note as a native that "South" California is not exactly local lingo), this remains a valuable contribution for fans and fanatics. Summing up this book, a mention of Segretto's rhetorical range deserves its own moment. He can be funny and he can move you, without straining (much) for attention. A typical aside comes during his dissection of a movie I resisted seeing in junior high. I will doubtless continue to avoid it after Segretto's review. Ken Russell's 1975 Tommy has many awful moments, apparently. One of many, given my affection for the advertising parodies cover of Sell Out, speaks for the rest. "Then there's Ann-Margret's infamous swim in a puddle of baked beans and hot fudge. At least it stops her from singing." P.S. She earned one of the film's three Oscar nominations.
(Amazon US 7-19-14 + PopMatters 7-24-14)

Ag an Babhla na Choillte Chulleain aríst.

 

Ar feadh an tseachtaine seo caite, thóg amach Léna agus mé leis Niall agus a chailín Áine. Chuaigh muid ag an Babhla na Choillte Chulleain aríst. Chuala muid ceithre saothair ceile.

Bhí siad téama na Fraince ann. Bhí maith liom an príomh-piosa is mó ann. Bhí sé an shionsacht daicheadú le Mozart. Tá sé ainmithe "an bParas,"ar ndóigh.

Ach, bhí sé an-ghearr ann. Ansin, bhí sé an dara piosa le Saint-Saens. Bhí se reasunta mór, ach go gearr, tháinig dordveidhle óg agus rinne sé go-hiontach.

Bhí sós ann. D'ith ceapaire cáis leis arán maith. D'ól leann Indiach geal "Loser" le Elysium i tSeattle agus leann dubh "Black Rhino" ó Grualann Adelbert i hAustin.

Sheineamh siad piosaí le Ibert agus Haydn. Bhí an priomh-piosa chomh ceol im "Bugs Bunny"; ní fheadfaidh go chuimne liomsa le Haydn is mó ach oiread! Mar sin féin, bhain sult as againnsa suas na rialtaí mar i gcónaí.

At the Hollywood Bowl again.

During the past week, Layne and I took Niall and his girlfriend Ann out. We went to the Hollywood Bowl again. We heard four musical works.

They had a French theme. I liked the first piece most. It was the fortieth symphony by Mozart. It is named "The Paris," of course.

But it was very short. Then there was the second piece by Saint-Saens. It was all right, but suddenly a young cellist came and made it wonderful.

There was a break. I ate a cheese sandwich with good bread. I drank an IPA "Loser" from Elysium in Seattle and a dark ale "Black Rhino" from Adelbert Brewery in Austin.

They played pieces by Ibert and Haydn. The first piece was like music in "Bugs Bunny": I cannot recall the Haydn much either! Nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves under the stars as always.

(Ghriangraf/Photo.)

George Eliot's "Middlemarch": Audiobook review

I am reviewing Juliet Stevenson's reading of the entire book, over thirty hours. She captures the nuances of expression in George Eliot's ruminating, satiric, painful, and idealistic visions as filtered through an omniscient narrator who creates a chronicle of this small English town's families. You get, this being a high-Victorian novel about the years just before the Queen ascended her throne, an immersion into the gentry. The poor tend to be backdrops, and the goings on of a doctor, a banker, a scholar, and their wives comprise the stories.

My favorite character is Causabon, who attracts Dorothea early on. Their relationship is fraught with sadness as well as dreams. Eliot pins down the lure of learned lore in an unforgettable way, even as she lets us see the folly of the grand scheme the couple follow.

This is one of the most famous novels in English, so the summaries of the plotlines and interspersed chapters examining the protagonists can be found easily. Stevenson captures the varied accents, male and female, deftly. A woman's voice open to emotion but steeled by intellect fits Eliot's own outlook well. This novel, true to triple-decker form does go on, and modern readers may need more patience than that of audiences long ago for such steady attention to the intricate observations Eliot conveys.

Hearing this, one gets caught up in the flow. The immense detail may or may not be lost on a listener rather than a reader. The various languages of the quotes opening each chapter are communicated faithfully and Stevenson and Eliot match each other in terms of the tone this novel takes, sometimes arch, sometimes sensitive, sometimes impassioned. It's a lot to follow.

Having studied this novel decades ago in college and then always meaning to return to it, I found this on audio a pleasant experience. No spoilers, but highlights are three deaths that play crucial roles here. All captured with wheezes, faltering voices, and growing weightiness well by Stevenson. Now, it is her voice I will hear in these pages if I see them again. (Amazon US 6-20-15 + Audible)

Mark Boyle's "Drinking Molotov Cocktails with Gandhi": Book Review

This Irish activist lived without money and oil for three years. Yet he writes in his third book about how such gestures seem to pale before what lies ahead. Those who disdain the capitalist and ecologically destructive system, Mark Boyle concedes, are outnumbered and overwhelmed by it.

And by those of us who capitulate to its ecocide. Drinking Molotov Cocktails with Gandhi, as its title signals, carries a mixed metaphor to those who want change. Peacemaking can only go so far against relentless violence perpetuated upon our planet. Boyle confronts pacifists with tough questions about how far they can advance their rear-guard and small-scale efforts, however ethical and sincere, against an uncaring economic juggernaut. What, Boyle reasons, is the violent action carried out to protect earth when compared with that inflicted upon it? We need, he demands, to fight back hard.

Many figures enter this to give some guidance to Boyle. He draws on influences from Aldo Leopold to Slavoj Zizek, Thoreau to Tolkien. Also, he integrates Earth First! leader Dave Foreman's arguments into his own lively reaction to those who condemn eco-fighters as if terrorists, while either directly or indirectly colluding with a far deadlier cabal of corporations and nations who damage far more than a lumber road into old-growth forests. Boyle makes a convincing case for rethinking this.

Boyle also includes a few anecdotes to make his case. I found a telling one in how the communal activity of cutting the bog for peat in rural Ireland, followed by a break to boil the water for tea, allowed the workers to relax and chat. When the flask was introduced, each laborer could then take his or her own tea, warmed already all day, into the bogs, and this cut down interaction with others.

Out of such incidents, we grow apart as technology separates us from our natural ties to each other. Nature and its draw plays of course a central role in this polemic. Boyle may not give glib answers to us, but from his own experience making it on a three-acre farm, he confronts what he tries to solve. 
(To be published Oct. 13; e-galley reviewed.)

Ken Bruen's "Green Hell": Book Review

As a loyal reader of the Jack Taylor series, I feared that he would not survive the batterings and beatings meted out to him in Galway's alleys or penthouses. But Ken Bruen keeps his protagonist going. Like the later installments, a young person of Goth tendencies surfaces, This time it's Emerald--she's a welcome presence to keep the plot moving as hard-bitten but tender prose.

Bruen is in fine form even if Jack is beaten down. Some of his allies have not survived the past few books, and this one makes our anti-hero feel more isolated in his home city, as it changes along with the economic boom not gone bust--but not for everyone. The critique of Irish society in more materialistic, secularized, and rueful times cuts as always, and is leavened by Bruen-as-Taylor's nods to real songs. And books, by his crime writing comrades, whom he praises through Jack's choice of entertainment.

Also we find an American student, abandoning his thesis on Beckett to tell Jack's story. This I like. For the first time in these books, we get a substantial portion of the narrative conveyed from another point-of-view. This enables audiences to see Jack as seen through the newcomer's fascinated eyes, and it's very entertaining. It runs more smoothly than a few of the recent installments, too.

Visits to bars, to charity shops, to Charlie Byrne's (real) bookshop where Ken Bruen's books are sold (always a nice touch) reoccur. The Church as usual via Fr. Maurice comes in for some harsh repartee, and the ex-colleagues on the Garda as usual regard their former colleague with delightful disdain. Academia at the local university comes in for its own depiction, and drives the plot here.

The summation provided on Amazon's site sets up the background efficiently. It's difficult to review these books in depth, as much depends on the rush of the action, the rueful reflections of Jack, and the intricate wrongs done by those often higher up in the corrupt port city. It's fun to imagine Jack taking out baddies across from the Claddagh and the chapel on Galway's docks, isn't it? (6/22/15)

Molly Crabapple's "Shell Game"

According to Kristen O'Regan, this is "A New England"; I located this with no idea what it was in a search for Occupy artwork. You can read more about street art in "Agora-phobic" at Guernica.

Animal's Marina Galperina explains that the painting I share here features "modern feminist icon Laurie Penny surrounded by protesting foxes and police hound dogs."  Animal shows all nine images of "Shell Game," conveying feminine imagery in a grand-mock Victorian Empire storybook style. It reminds me of a surprisingly tiny image I saw in London at the Tate , "The Fairy Fellow's Master-Stroke" by Richard Dadd. Not in its direct color, but in the wealth of detail filling the intricate canvas.

Dadd went mad. It is as maddening to consider how little impact the frustrations of ordinary people have against what idealistic anarchists call "impossibilism," the notion that resistance and revolt can overthrow our corrupt system keeping us in debt to bankers, cowed by lawyers, fearful of police, coddled by media and entertainment bent on distracting us, but convinced the next election=change.

I composed this after a week of legal upheaval. Obamacare upheld, Confederate battle flags taken down, and same-sex marriage approved. Argue as some may, decades of progress have paid off. Yes, many grumble at the imposition of federal power. Most, on these and other matters, reason that as with slavery and patriarchy, superstition and bigotry, we must evolve away from outmoded strictures.

Yet, how quickly will liberation happen? I sympathize with principled populism, but its long-range success seems co-opted by those elected. Ever more dependent on an unjust economic and political regime combined to make us compliant by measures at work, cameras in public, and data as tracked, how can we fight such ubiquitous power? The Net promised us empowerment twenty years ago. Now it seeks only to monetize all we do, cajoling us as shoppers and consumers, to exploit our very selves.

It's no longer fat white men in cummerbunds, like Monopoly game millionaires, pulling such strings. Women and those marginalized rush to shatter glass ceilings, but do start-ups differ from Fortune 500 firms that significantly? As the show Silicon Valley skewers, "doing good" is their cynical manifesto. 

What's intriguing about Molly Crabapple's art in the "Shell Game" series is that she incorporates female symbols and caricatures, both as villains and heroines. (If I can still deliberately employ that contested noun.) Her account of the years between 9/11 and Occupy will appear at the end of this year, Drawing Blood. Funded on Kickstarter, her work in the year after OWS continues her pen-and-ink drawings, O'Regan reports, which revel in "frenzied visual chaos and declarative allegory." Like others, the artist takes inspiration from Athens' street art and protests; I found this on the day that the banks were shut EU imposed austerity measures on this defiant/cowed Greek nation.

Rojava's revolution

 

"In Northern Syria, 2.5 million people are living in a stateless, feminist, religiously tolerant, anti-capitalist society of their own creation. They call their territory Rojava, and they defend it fiercely." So begins the introduction to A Small Key Can Unlock a Large Door, a 2015 book from the radical press collective Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. They interpret a complicated Kurdish reality, misunderstood by many, not only leftists. "We need some context to truly understand the words and ideas of the rebels of Rojava, else we can be easily seduced by over-simplifications and distortions — like the claims that the struggle in Rojava is a replay of the Spanish Revolution, or that it is a sophisticated public relations makeover for a Maoist national liberation struggle." Small Key mixes left-libertarian analysis with interviews, firsthand accounts, and journalism.

"Rojava is neither a state nor a pure anarchist society. It is an ambitious social experiment that has rejected the seduction of state power and nationalism and has instead embraced autonomy, direct democracy, and decentralization to create a freer society for people in Rojava. The Rojava principles have borrowed from anarchism, social ecology, and feminism in an attempt to chart a societal vision that emphasizes accountability and independence for a radically pluralistic community." By direct democracy and a common economy, Rojava reinvents. {I updated this entry w/more hyperlinks to coverage, 12-19-15}

Dilar Dirik, in another excerpt, looks at women's subversion. Against ISIS, they join men who resist.  "Being a militant is seen as 'unwomanly'; it crosses social boundaries, it shakes the foundations of the status quo. War is seen as a man’s issue – started, led, and ended by men. So it is the 'woman' part of 'woman fighter' which causes this general discomfort." I think of a difference my wife and I have. She insists if women ruled, war would end. Perhaps in time it will, with such women as leaders?

Yet, they claim violence is not an end. Dirik shows: “'We don’t want the world to know us because of our guns, but because of our ideas,' says Sozda, a YPJ commander in Amûde, and points at the pictures on their common room’s walls: PKK guerrilla fighters and Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned ideological representative of the movement. 'We are not just women fighting ISIS. We struggle to change the society’s mentality and show the world what women are capable of.' Though there is no organic tie between the PKK and the Rojava administration, the political ideology is shared."

I admit peacemakers may, as in other self-defense campaigns, find their fervent hopes for conflict resolution thwarted by the reactionary and remorseless might of ISIS. The Kurds, under attack as non-Arabs for centuries by indigenous rulers and imperialist entities, cannot fend off by earnest appeals or amicable parleys the armed assaults and brutal regimentation of the Daesh, who have wiped out so many people in their invasions. Against their remorseless incursion, the Kurds take aim.

Across three cantons in Western Kurdistan on the Syrian frontier, a parlous situation continues. The map in the STW excerpt shows the smallness of the liberated Rojava areas vs. the vast ISIS territory. Western strategists understandably follow events here, while many on the left worldwide nit-pick. Libcom offers a helpful reading guide, where the comments and coverage display the pro-con sides.

I commented in an earlier post about the controversial legacy of "Apo" Ocalan, founder of the PKK, over his Maoist and Marxist-Leninist origins. But STW regards the recent transformation of Rojava as noteworthy. "Any sincere analysis of the past two years in Rojava shows an honest commitment to pluralistic and decentralized ideas, words, and practice." Against the male-dominated Kurdish traditions, feminism and plurality of ethnic and religious identities are encouraged. Anti-capitalism and a Murray Bookchin-Zapatista grassroots economics via cooperative ideals are promoted. Much more about these issues can be found hyperlinked at Peace in Kurdistan. More at Anarchy in Action.

The latter site reports, quoting Rafael Taylor: "The PKK itself has apparently taken after their leader, not only adopting Bookchin's specific brand of eco-anarchism, but actively internalizing the new philosophy in its strategy and tactics. The movement abandoned its bloody war for Stalinist/Maoist revolution and the terror tactics that came with it, and began pursuing a largely non-violent strategy aimed at greater regional autonomy." Ocalan calls this participation "democratic confederalism."

Since I wrote this, Turkey is bombing the Kurds in its zone in retaliation, supposedly, for ISIS. This cynical strategy is payback for Kurdish resistance, and the situation seems more dire than when I researched this two months ago. This dispirits me, and again, I wonder about self-defense against such overwhelming odds. Yet, unlike the Tibetans, say, surely some nations are arming many Kurds. 

You can support the people yourself. An autonomous university is opening and needs books and Kindles. A People's Library seeks stock to counter the destruction visited upon such centers by ISIS. Liberation can happen, the authors admit, as long as Western supporters and allies do not waste time over-analyzing the diverse roots of the struggle, rather than come to its practical, not theoretical, aid.

Lex Bayer + John Migdor's "Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart": Book Review

If you don't believe in God or gods, what then? Stanford humanist chaplain Migdor and his colleague, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Lex Bayer, offer a reasonable, calmly argued, and philosophically constructed set of Ten "Non-commandments" aimed to guide the growing numbers of non-believers along a straightforward path.

The first five emerge from atheist tenets based on observable reality to distinguish truth from false claims. Data and evidence derive from what can be tested and what is open to verification, correction, rejection, or acceptance. Basically and unsurprisingly, the authors establish that truth-claims about divine existence fail to explain why one manifestation is to be proven among myriad competitors past and present, and they offer a stimulating analogy to a "religious lottery" (50). A secular spin on Pascal's wager, this game of chance means no believer in this life can be sure that his or her choice will "pay off" as opposed to competing versions of a deity or gods. Religion is redefined as a "set of starting assumptions" rather than truth-claims able to be verified. God, the authors assert, is an assumption rather than a belief. (53) "Beliefs are simply inserted into a space left empty by a lack of effort." (136) Strong words in a generally genial study. However, Bayer and Migdor roll out a logical response that confirms that belief in an unseen presence with the names we are most familiar with is no different than that which insists elves or Thor or Babalú must exist.

There may endure a "high level of confidence" among atheists (whom they align more or less with humanists and agnostics early on if with some slight delineation) that God may not exist. But the writers also agree with Richard Dawkins' 6.9 (who ranks himself on his scale, 7 as total non-belief) that the odds are stacked against divine existence. Still, logically total certainty can never be claimed.

The second half of this brief book articulates the humanist comfort gained when one acts to increase the well-being and happiness of others, and so ensures more contentment for one's self. No facile reduction to Utilitarianism, yet this asserts a thoughtful consideration of how we may treat each other better. I found the tone shift here, as a more relaxed, expansive attitude appeared to replace the rigor of the preceding section. I was not sure if one author took charge of one part more than the other, or if the subject matter created its own mood, but it was noticeable from the start of the ethical portion.

Overall, this is very readable. I expected a refutation of the classic ontological arguments of Anselm, the teleological and cosmological ones of Aquinas, the argument from design by Paley. But no trace of these terms, or even Primum Mobile or uncaused cause, watchmakers or a 747 in a junkyard can be found. So, this may fit the needs as the authors encourage of more of a self-study book for those needing reflection and direction towards a more articulate type of non-belief. Two pages are included so you can make up your own tenets to mull over, for in this process, the authors find their own rationales have been tested and made stronger. I like the conversations they have with each other that show how one person's range of subjective views build up one's moral standards. They refuse any universal objective set of morals can be defined. I wish more depth had been given to the common challenges to this, and in the "Common Religious Objections" to some of the venerable theorems for God's existence. For, these will be faced by nearly anyone tackling this in conversation or debate with Christian believers. Only one medieval thinker is mentioned. Cleverly, Ockham's Razor is applied to advance the logical preference for the simplest explanation for what we observe, God-free.

Bayer and Migdor favor reasonable interactions, to strengthen community, and a just, rational society. They turn to the case of the Boston bomber who hid under a boat and wrote on its hull a literally "unintelligible" scrawl justifying in the name of Allah the immoral action perpetuated by "heinous acts" such as the bombers carried out. (117) This haunting comparison reminds readers of the irrational motives which continue to attempt to rally people in a supposedly advanced century to take on outmoded and illogical rationales to perpetrate violence upon those outside their own belief system. Such fanatics chant the name of one of the many competing versions of God or gods which Migdor and Bayer seek to prove as false. (Amazon US 12-11-14; Vote for beliefs; author's website)