"...Goebbels' insight was that entertainment was the best propaganda..."
See also:
Leonard W. Doob: Goebbels' Principles of Propaganda
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Goebbels - Film and Propaganda
Ken Kesey, The Art of Fiction No. 136
From The Paris Review:
INTERVIEWER
What connection is there between Ken Kesey the magician-prankster and Ken Kesey the writer?
KESEY
The common denominator is the joker. It’s the symbol of the prankster. Tarot scholars say that if it weren’t for the fool, the rest of the cards would not exist. The rest of the cards exist for the benefit of the fool. The fool in tarot is this naive innocent spirit with a rucksack over his shoulder like Kerouac, his eyes up into the sky like Yeats, and his dog biting his rump as he steps over the cliff. We found one once at a big military march in Santa Cruz. Thousands of soldiers marching by. All it took was one fool on the street corner pointing and laughing, and the soldiers began to be uncomfortable, self-conscious. That fool of Shakespeare’s, the actor Robert Armin, became so popular that finally Shakespeare wrote him out of Henry IV. In a book called A Nest of Ninnies, Armin wrote about the difference between a fool artificial and a fool natural. And the way Armin defines the two is important; the character Jack Oates is a true fool natural. He never stops being a fool to save himself; he never tries to do anything but anger his master, Sir William. A fool artificial is always trying to please; he’s a lackey. Ronald McDonald is a fool artificial. Hunter Thompson is a fool natural. So was the Little Tramp. Neal Cassady was a fool natural, the best one we knew.
More...Why do we need the Barbarians?
According to Professor Grumpy, the Historian on the Edge:
My contribution to these sessions is essentially to sum up by asking you one big question: why do we need the barbarians? For it seems that we really do need the barbarians. The answer was found, or at least suggested, in 1904 by C.P. Cavafy in his famous, much quoted, poem “Waiting for the Barbarians” (even quoted, inexplicably, in the names of chic jewellery boutiques in the 7me arrondissement in Paris, as left):
“Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come
And some of our men just in from the border say
There are no barbarians any longer.
“Now what’s going to happen to us without the barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.”
Those people were a kind of solution.”
He was right; the bigger question, a hundred years on from Cavafy, is probably ‘a solution to what?’ As far as I can see, the problem which they solve cannot be ‘why did the Roman Empire fall?’ The barbarians’ role in any analysis of the Empire’s collapse must surely be sought under ‘consequences’ or ‘effects’ or – perhaps better – ‘components’, rather than under ‘causes’. If one looks at the matter in simple descriptive terms, the number of provinces or amount of territory actually conquered by barbarians during the fifth century is minimal.
[ ... ]
Why, then, are people so wedded to the barbarians as the major cause for any and all change in the late antique west? For they are.
[ ... ]
The barbarian can change the world; he can bring down empires; he can create kingdoms. The barbarian dominates history. ‘He’ is not like ‘us’, enmeshed in our laws, our little lives and petty responsibilities. The barbarians in the vision of Peter Heather, are peoples with ‘coherent aims', which they set out single-mindedly to achieve. No people in the whole of recorded human history have ever had single coherent sets of aims. Well – none other than the barbarians anyway.
More...
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Why Joyce’s Leopold Bloom still matters
’manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted labour. The poor man starves while they are grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and phartridges in their purblind pomp of pelf and power. But their reign is rover for rever and ever and ev . . .’ - Leopold Bloom, 16th June 1904
This Saturday is Bloomsday, and at 1:00PM at the Spire in Dublin, there will be a Greece Solidarity event. The event coincides with the Greek people going to the polls on Sunday to elect a new government. The event will also include an open assembly with the theme – ‘Cross-European Solidarity: the possibilities for combined struggle and the particular question of Greece’.
This event is being organised by members of Real Democracy Now Ireland and by Greek citizens living in Ireland. We welcome your participation and support in making it happen. Visit the Facebook Event page at http://www.facebook.com/events/237413049694776/
Doggie database to trace poo offenders in Jarusalem
The Jerusalem municipality is planning to compile a DNA database for dogs in the Holy City in a bid to combat the problem of dog poo by tracing droppings back to the offending pooch.
In a statement, the municipality said it would first be collecting saliva samples from dogs in the city before inputting them into a citywide database.
More...
See also:
Poland to use testicle-biting dogs, sonic cannons for riot control at 2012 Euro Cup
UK anarchists sabotage railway
Anarchists have sabotaged railway lines in a major English city as the insurrection against neoliberalism steps up across the world.
A statement was posted on Bristol Indymedia by the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI) - May 22nd Group.
It reads: "On the morning of May 22nd we struck two points on the railway routes into Bristol, on the outer sides of Patchway (northern) and Parson Street (southern) stations.
[ ... ]
"Such actions are a time-honoured method of disturbing the 'social peace' myth: from similar sabotages in France; cash courier vehicles getting destroyed in Crete; the night-time smashing of train station ticket machines in Austrailia; resistance to highway developments eating even further into wild landscapes (such as Khimki forest in Russia) whilst displacing animals and people who are still refusing to assimilate into industrial civilisation (such as Bolivia's TIPNIS project in one of the most biodiverse regions in the world); to the iconic seizure and arson of the city bus in London last August."
More...
The sardine apocalypse: Mystery of 200-ton shoal of dead fish that washed up at port, turned the sea red and created a HUGE stink
An entire port town in Japan has been left reeking of dead fish after nearly 200 tons of stinky sardines washed up on its shore.
The massive shoal started washing up at the fishing port of Ohara, on Japan's west-facing North Pacific Ocean coast, on June 3 and quickly turned the sea red.
Since then the bizarre phenomenon gone has rapidly got out of control.
More...
Ecstasy and the Eschaton
Shunyamurti writes in Reality Sandwich:
Language immanentizes the Eschaton. The hyperdimensionality of the Supreme Real is lost in the flattened intellectualized reflection that discourse forces upon our supramental intuition. To say that the Eschaton is upon us is to recognize that the Real Itself is morphing into the monstrous, invading our imaginaries, seizing up our symbolic defenses, and finally forcing us to face the beyond of language. We are entering that beyond, one way or another: through horror that is unspeakable, sadness that cannot control its tears, or infinite ecstasy that unfolds as the Eschaton embodied as the ultimate paradox that is the Self.
Many people still want to waste time arguing over how serious a crisis is this really; or, whether any leader can be trusted to guide us through the transition; or, whether the vaunted goal of transcendence of the ego is even more than a mirage; or if renunciation of egoic jouissance is useful, healthy, and a necessary part of a redemptive path; or whether grace will simply descend upon us all one day, no matter if we are meditating and fasting, or drinking beer and watching tv.
Thankfully, there is no more time for such barren debates. Civilization is breaking apart; unpredictable catastrophes are occurring daily in every part of the world; the ecological die-off accelerates, murdering our oceans and our lands; the climate continues to morph our sacred planet savagely into a world that is uninhabitable; while armies and bands of guerrillas everywhere continue an irrelevant armed struggle, either to defend or to overthrow a system that is doomed, no matter which side wins.
More...
~ ~ ~
Urban wasteland: World Bank sees global garbage crisis
From PhysOrg:
In a report on "a relatively silent problem that is growing daily," released on Wednesday, the World Bank estimated city dwellers will generate a waste pile of 2.2 billion tonnes a year by 2025, up 70 percent from today's level of 1.3 billion tonnes.
In the meantime, the cost of solid waste management is projected to soar to $375 billion a year, from the current $205 billion.
Billing the report, "What a Waste: A Global Review of Solid Waste Management" as the first worldwide comprehensive look at trash, the World Bank warned the data points to crisis ahead, as living standards rise and urban populations soar.
FeyeraBand: On the right track (Anything Goes)
Extract from Paul Feyerabend: Against Method (Anything Goes)
S.O.S Yo Soy 132 - Solidarity With Mexico
It's time to make democracy a global and true phenomena [sic]
(select your language by clicking the "cc" buttom and selecting translate)
http://www.facebook.com/pages/SOS-Yo-Soy-132/443515605666906
Can Dialectics Break Bricks?
Excerpts from René Viénet's 1973 film "Can Dialectics Break Bricks?"
"Imagine a kung fu flick in which the martial artists spout Situationist aphorisms about conquering alienation while decadent bureaucrats ply the ironies of a stalled revolution. This is what you'll encounter in René Viénet's outrageous refashioning of a Chinese fisticuff film. An influential Situationist, Viénet stripped the soundtrack from a run-of-the-mill Hong Kong export and lathered on his own devastating dialogue. . . . A brilliant, acerbic and riotous critique of the failure of socialism in which the martial artists counter ideological blows with theoretical thrusts from Debord, Reich and others. . . . Viénet's target is also the mechanism of cinema and how it serves ideology."
See also:
Underrated band Shiner performing 'The Situationist'
And The Situationist performing 'Floor 13' live in Roanoke, VA
Deep Inside The World Of Anonymous
In her new book, Forbes reporter Parmy Olson charts the explosion Anonymous through the eyes of some of its most notorious figureheads.
See also:
Anonymous - FBI secretly creates DCAC Internet police
Not much has been revealed about one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's newest projects, the (Domestic Communications Assistance Centre), and the FBI will probably try to keep it that way. Despite attempting to keep the DCAC largely under wraps, an investigation spearheaded by Cnet's Declan McCullagh is quickly collecting details about the agency's latest endeavor.
Assange Wears Anonymous Mask for Last Public Appearance Before Extradition Ruling
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has made a rare public appearance in London, wearing a black Anonymous mask, as the decision on his extradition case nears.
http://LeakSource.wordpress.com
Violent August: The 1918 Anti-Greek Riots in Toronto - Documentary Film
Excerpt:
On a hot August night, not all that long ago and for the next four consecutive nights the good citizens of Toronto went crazy and ignited the largest riot in the citys history and one of the largest anti-Greek riots in the world.
Why did it happen? Why the Greeks? What were the consequences? Why, until now, has this incredible incident been forgotten? Incorporating detailed interviews with historians and family members of those affected, Violent August explores the causes of the riot and chronicles the events in detail. Using actual archival photos, newspaper reports and representational newsreel footage, the documentary brings the people, places and incidents vividly to life.
Violent August reveals the social conditions and motives of the enraged WW1 veterans who started the riots and the position of the small community of Greek immigrants and restaurant operators who unwittingly became the lightening rod for the violence. The film provides a powerful and shocking example of how a festering climate of racism and resentment became a ticking time bomb primed to explode at the slightest provocation.
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