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Interview with Gore Vidal
David Barsamian, The Progressive
Gore Vidal is a gold mine of quips and zingers. And his vast knowledge of literature and history—particularly American—makes for an impressive figure. His razor-sharp tongue lacerates the powerful. He does it with aplomb, saying, “Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.” He has a wry sense of noblesse oblige: “There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”
Now eighty, he lives in the Hollywood hills in a modest mansion with immodest artwork. I felt I was entering a museum of Renaissance art. A stern painting of the Emperor Constantine was looking down upon us as we sat in his majestic living room. A Buddha statue from Thailand stood nearby. But all was not somber. He had a Bush doll with a 9/11 bill sticking out of it on a table behind us.
His aristocratic pedigree is evident not just in his artistic sophistication but also in his locution. In a war of words, few can contend with Vidal.
“I’m a lover of the old republic and I deeply resent the empire our Presidents put in its place,” he declares.
Dorothy Day: A true Christian, a ‘dangerous radical’
Tom Deegan
From The Chronicle
“The impulse to stand up against the state and go to jail, rather than serve, is an instinct for penance; To take on some of the suffering of the world — to share in it.” — Dorothy Day, February 1969.
For many years, I had only a vague knowledge who Dorothy Day was. I knew that in the 1920s she and her spiritual mentor, a French peasant and religious philosopher named Peter Maurin, founded a newspaper called, The Catholic Worker, and that in her time she was viewed by many to be a “dangerous radical.” She was considered such a menace that J. Edgar Hoover, that pillar of goodness and decency (cough!), even kept a file on her. Quite frankly, I’ve come to a point in my life where I’m seriously disappointed in anyone who lived during that period who didn’t have their own little place of honor in Hoover’s file cabinet. Think about it — Charlie Chaplin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, John Lennon — that’s pretty good company to be in!
But other than that basic outline, my knowledge of her life was, to say the least, peripheral. She was always merely a footnote in someone else’s biography.
Late last summer, while browsing through the used book store at the library in Cornwall, I happened upon a copy of the book, “By Little and By Little: The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day.” After reading it, a whole new world opened up for me and I found myself exploring everything connected to this good and decent woman and her beautiful life. She is, I believe, a saint.
Anonymous Comrade writes: "From Beirut"
Bilal El-Amine
Hi everyone. First of all, I am fine as are family and friends. We’re scattered in different places, some still in the south, some in Tyre, the rest in Beirut and its surroundings. Those who live in the southern suburbs where Hizbullah is based managed to leave before the latest strikes and are safe with relatives.
As most of you know, Hizbullah carried out a bold operation a few days ago and managed to capture two Israeli soldiers. The resistance has been saying for quite some time now that it intends to free the remaining Lebanese prisoners in Israel, most prominently Samir Qantar. Dubbed the “dean of the prisoners,” Qantar is the longest serving Arab prisoner in Israel. He was to be released along with other Lebanese prisoners in a swap between Hizbullah and Israel. The Israeli government voted not to release him and two others and stupidly kept the prisoner file open.
The Hizbullah operation was an attempt to put an end to the matter. There were several previous unsuccessful attempts that were costly to the resistance. This operation according to Nasrallah, the general-secretary of Hizbullah, was months in planning and its timing, which has been endlessly criticized, may have been logistical more than anything else.
In light of Israel’s ferocious response, it is worth noting that the capture of the two Israeli soldiers was a pure military operation and did not as much scratch an Israeli civilian. Israel’s counter is exactly the opposite—collective punishment of the civilian population by destroying the country’s infrastructure and committing ugly massacres against families and fleeing refugees as they did yesterday in the south. Who’s the terrorist in this case, even by the self-serving definitions peddled in Washington.
beyrut is me writes: "A Protracted Colonial War"
Tariq Ali, Guardian
With US support, Israel is hoping to isolate and topple Syria by holding sway over Lebanon.
In his last interview — after the 1967 six-day war — the historian Isaac Deutscher, whose next-of-kin had died in the Nazi camps and whose surviving relations lived in Israel, said: "To justify or condone Israel's wars against the Arabs is to render Israel a very bad service indeed and harm its own long-term interest." Comparing Israel to Prussia, he issued a sombre warning: "The Germans have summed up their own experience in the bitter phrase 'Man kann sich totseigen!' 'You can triumph yourself to death'."
In Israel's actions today we can detect many of the elements of hubris: an imperial arrogance, a distortion of reality, an awareness of its military superiority, the self-righteousness with which it wrecks the social infrastructure of weaker states, and a belief in its racial superiority. The loss of many civilian lives in Gaza and Lebanon matters less than the capture or death of a single Israeli soldier. In this, Israeli actions are validated by the US.
As Mexico Awaits Judges' Ruling, The Writing Is On The Wall And In The
Streets:
AMLO Presidente!
John Ross, CounterPunch
MEXICO CITY — The day before Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), the
peppery left leader who insists he is the winner of the July 2 election
here, summoned over a million Mexicans to the great Zocalo plaza to lay
out plans for civil resistance to prevent right-winger Felipe Calderon
from stealing the presidency, this reporter marched down from
neighboring Morelos state with a group of weather-beaten campesinos the
color of the earth.
Saul Franco and his companeros farmed plots in the village of
Anenecuilco, the hometown of revolutionary Emiliano Zapata who gave his
life to defend the community's land from the big hacienda owners. "It
is our obligation to fix this fraud and kick the rich out of power,"
Saul explained. "If Zapata was still alive he would be with us today"
the 52 year-old farmer insisted, echoing the sentiment on the
hand-lettered cardboard sign he carried.
But although Saul and his companions admired and supported Lopez
Obrador, they were not so happy with AMLO's party, the Party of the
Democratic Revolution or PRD. "We had a PRD mayor and things went badly
and we lost the next time around," remembered Pedro, Saul's cousin.
Indeed, many PRD candidates are just made-over members of the
once-ruling (71 years) Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI that
have climbed on Lopez Obrador's coattails to win public office. In 57
per cent of all elections the PRD has won, the party has subsequently
failed to win reelection.
kolya abramsky writes: "This is a call by Paul Gipe,
a leading expert in community controlled wind energy (see http://www.wind-works.org/ ."
"Impeach, Convict, Arrest, & Imprison George W. Bush"
Paul Gipe
It’s imperative that we, the American people, stop George W. Bush from starting another war. This time he has his sights set on Iran and, as in Iraq, the intelligence is being fixed around the policy. Worse, Bush is threatening use of nuclear weapons. Has he gone mad? Will he plunge us into a worldwide nuclear war?
Our course is clear. The House must impeach George W. Bush, and the Senate must convict him for a long list of criminal acts that fall under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution for “high crimes and misdemeanors”.
Neocons Rise From Mideast Ashes
Robert Dreyfuss
Israel's reckless, high-stakes decision to launch simultaneous wars against both Hamas and Hezbollah last week is a critical, perhaps world-shattering event. It cannot be seen merely in its local context, that is, as an act by the unilateralist regime in Jerusalem to crush the armed wings of two Islamic fundamentalist organizations in Gaza, the West Bank and southern Lebanon. Nor can it be seen merely in its regional context, that is, as an effort to raise the stakes in the struggle against Syria, Iran and rejectionist factions in occupied Iraq. Rather, Israel's actions must be seen, first and foremost, in the context of global politics.
Anonymous Comrade writes: Two Wars
David Hirsh
Since before it even existed, Israel has been engaged in two wars with its neighbours. One is a just war, waged by Palestinian Arabs for freedom - which became a demand for Palestinian national independence; the other is a genocidal war that aims to end Jewish life in the Middle East.
The job of the left is to insist on the reality of this distinction and to stand against those who recognise the reality of only one or other of these two separate wars.
Nevertheless, when Israeli tanks are stalking through the crowded streets of Gaza, when Katyusha rockets are slamming into Haifa, when Israeli F16s are blowing up buildings in the suburbs of Beirut and when Israeli soldiers are being held in underground dungeons waiting for their own beheading to be broadcast on al-Jazeera, the distinction seems entirely notional.
Marxist Literary Critics Are Following Me!
How Philip K. Dick Betrayed His Academic Admirers To The FBI
Jeet Heer, Lingua Franca
[From Volume 11, No. 4—May/June 2001]
WHEN THE NOVELIST PHILIP K. DICK DIED IN 1982, THE INFLUENTIAL literary theorist Fredric Jameson eulogized him as "the Shakespeare of science fiction." At the time of this encomium, Dick was hardly famous. The author of more than fifty books, he had an enthusiastic following among science fiction fans. But he was rarely read by anyone else.
These days, Dick is far better known. Vintage publishes his fiction in a uniform paperback edition. Hollywood filmmakers transform his stories of imaginary worlds and conspiratorial cartels into movies like Screamers and Total Recall. Meanwhile, academic critics laud him as a postmodernist visionary, a canny prophet of virtual reality, corporate espionage, and the schizoid nature of identity in a digitized world. Indeed, beginning in the last years of his life and continuing to the present, these critics have played a key role in the canonization of Philip K. Dick.
But did Dick return the favor? Not exactly. To their considerable anguish, Dick's academic champions have had to contend with the revelation that their hero wrote letters to the Federal Bureau of Investigation denouncing them. In these letters, Dick claimed that Jameson and other literary theorists were agents of a KGB conspiracy to take over American science fiction.
Anonymous Comrade writes:
When Terror Is Just Fine
John Chuckman
Following the assassination of Reinhard Heidrich by Czech partisans in 1942, Hitler’s government executed all the men in the village of Lidici, sent its women and children to concentration camps, and razed the village to the ground. A few weeks later, the barbarism was repeated on the village of Lezaky.
Lidici was far from being the worst atrocity of the war, but it rightly came to symbolize heartless oppression by occupiers, what we sometimes today call state terror.
I cannot think of another historical example which better parallels Israel’s savage behavior in Lebanon. Two of its soldiers are kidnapped, and Israel quickly destroys much of the infrastructure of Lebanon, cuts the country off from the world, and kills, at this writing, two hundred civilians.
Already forgotten in the press is Israel’s behavior leading up to events in Lebanon. Israel had blown up an entire family on a Gaza beach and carried out a number of other killings and assassinations. It killed about twenty innocent people in a week or so. The pitiful efforts of people in Gaza to respond to the outrages were met by more killing and a partial invasion. Most of the cabinet of Palestine was kidnapped, and the elected Prime Minister was openly threatened with assassination.
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