Goebbels - Film and Propaganda

"...Goebbels' insight was that entertainment was the best propaganda..."

See also:
Leonard W. Doob: Goebbels' Principles of 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.

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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.”

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.

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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/

Source

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.

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See also:

Poland to use testicle-biting dogs, sonic cannons for riot control at 2012 Euro Cup