treball

treballa

...E quando ci domanderanno che cosa stiamo facendo,
tu potrai rispondere loro: Noi ricordiamo.
Ecco dove alla lunga avremo vinto noi.
E verrà il giorno in cui saremo in grado di ricordare
una tal quantità di cose che potremo costruire
la più grande scavatrice meccanica della storia e scavare,
in tal modo, la più grande fossa di tutti i tempi,
nella quale sotterrare la guerra.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

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mercoledì, 25 giugno 2008
Ma noi facciamone un’altra



Ma noi
di Nanni Balestrini

1.1
non la riproduzione
con gli occhi del linguaggio
da qualsiasi parte ti metti
non mima niente
un varco incolmabile
un mare di ambiguità
dietro la pagina
gli anni della palude

non la riproduzione
nel paesaggio verbale
dopo la confusione delle
non c’è più posto per loro
la rivoluzione non è un
si lamentano sempre
mentre passiamo bruciando
un’altra restaurazione
la negazione di un modo di formare

con gli occhi del linguaggio
da qualsiasi parte ti metti
il rifiuto della storia
delle intenzioni e delle idee
5.3
senza lasciar tracce
7.3
questo tipo di montaggio
non è un sentimento

da qualsiasi parte ti metti
non c’è più posto per loro
delle intenzioni e delle idee
nel paesaggio verbale
l’amnistia ai fascisti
hanno fatto la ricostruzione
non c’è più tempo da perdere
voi non lo avete trasformato
in altre parole



non mima niente
la rivoluzione non è un
3.5
l’amnistia ai fascisti
5.5
l’azione consiste nel confronto fra
il linguaggio del linguaggio
qui manca un verso
9.5

un varco incolmabile
si lamentano sempre
senza lasciar tracce
hanno fatto la ricostruzione
l’azione consiste nel confronto fra
il rifiuto della storia
sovrappore un’altra immagine
l’arte dell’impazienza
la parola come un oggetto

un mare di ambiguità
mentre passiamo bruciando
3.7
non c’è più tempo da perdere
il linguaggio del linguaggio
sovrappore un’altra immagine
7.7
dopo un lungo silenzio
viene un verso più lungo di tutti gli altri



dietro la pagina
un’altra restaurazione
questo tipo di montaggio
voi non lo avete trasformato
qui manca un verso
l’arte dell’impazienza
dopo un lungo silenzio
nel paesaggio verbale
l’aborto della resistenza

gli anni della palude
la negazione di un modo di formare
non è un sentimento
in altre parole
5.9
la parola come un oggetto
viene il verso più lungo di tutti gli altri
l’aborto della resistenza
il rifiuto della storia

da Ma noi facciamone un’altra (1964-1968)

allegato
* Scarica il 68 di Balestrini

http://www.deriveapprodi.org/articolo.php?art=179

Postato da: treball a 25/06/2008 18:57 | link | commenti |
libri, testi, poetry, memoria, letteratura italiana, repetita iuvant, social, letterature, resistenze, unforgettable, occidente, allusioni

giovedì, 13 marzo 2008
Victor Cavallo, Uno stalker a Roma



"Ce n'hoabbastanza "

di Vittorio Vitolo in arte Victor Cavallo   

ce n'ho abbastanza per comprarmi una bottiglia di vodka
un chilo di arance un amburg il pane tondo una birra
un pacchetto di marlboro.

E poi mangio l'amburg col pane tondo tostato e
bevo la birra e fumo la marlboro e poi spremo due
arance con la vodka.

E poi esco e incontro la più grande figa della mia
vita con gli occhi verdi e le ciglia nere e la bocca
rossa e le mani nervose e decidiamo cazzo di non
fare nessun film di non scrivere nessuna stronzata di non recitare
nessuna cagata e di non andare in campagna
e di non occuparci della casa né della merda né dei capelli né dei comunisti.

Io butto nel fiume il trench di mio fratello
io compro i biglietti per la partita roma-river plate
io raccolgo gli occhi nella spazzatura
io accompagno mio figlio nel paradiso totale
senza nessun pericolo né gas né elettricità né politica
né bicchieri né coltelli né stanze di pavimento.

E lei scompare come le ore e appare come le ore
e me ne frego della pensione e me ne frego di morire
me ne frego dei fascisti e dovunque mi sdraio sogno
e ho sempre voglia di baciarla e gli alberi
respirano e le nuvole di merda si spaccano
e da dentro partono razzi luminosi
e dovunque sono vivo e non ho nessuna paura
né dei rinoceronti né dei serpenti né degli appuntamenti
e butto via l'elmetto e esco dalla trincea delle spalle di piombo
e mando affanculo tutti gli stronzi cagacazzi della terra
e grido come un'arancia stellare
e viaggio nella luce dell'ananas e cago cicche d'oro
sulla faccia dei nazi-igienisti maledetti
puliscicessi. Buttare via il tempo della vita
a lucidare i bidè e conservare i bicchieri
e sorridersi a culo sbarrato e invecchiare
come i più stronzi prima di noi.

Maledetti cagoni falsi e vigliacconi.
lei apparirà. Bruciando i tampax dell'anima sanguinante.
apparirà con gli occhi verdi e ciglia nere e bocca rossa
anima luminosa come arcobaleno puro
radice che spiega con tutta la chiarezza perché questa merda è merda

e finirò di vivere la vita con la paura di vivere la vita.


Victor Cavallo- da 1° Guida Poetica Italiana, 1979

http://www.activitaly.it/victor/cenho.htm

Postato da: treball a 13/03/2008 20:01 | link | commenti (22) |
italia, libri, testi, poetry, memoria, letteratura italiana, repetita iuvant, genius, unforgettable

giovedì, 13 settembre 2007
Lord of War



Meet Viktor Bout,
the Real-Life 'Lord of War'

Journalist Douglas Farah, co-author of a new book on Viktor Bout, tells how the Tajik-born arms dealer forged a lucrative career skirting U.N. embargoes to sell weapons and air transport services to warlords and despots—not to mention the U.S. military and its contractors in Iraq.

Laura Rozen
Mother Jones, September 13, 2007

Former Soviet military officer Viktor Bout, the inspiration for Nicholas Cage's character in the Lord of War, remade himself as an international arms dealer and blood diamonds trafficker following the break-up of the USSR. Using his air charter business to smuggle weapons into the world's conflict zones (circumventing U.N. embargoes), Bout traveled the world with a precious gems expert and accountant in tow, supplying arms to a notorious clientele: Liberia's Charles Taylor, a cast of Congolese warlords, and the Taliban, among others. More surprising, journalists Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun report in their new book on Bout, Merchant of Death, is that the shadowy Tajik-born arms dealer has also provided his services to the U.S. military and several U.S. contractors in Iraq, including Halliburton parent company Kellogg, Brown & Root. Laura Rozen interviewed Farah via email.

Mother Jones: How did Viktor Bout get his start as an international supplier of arms, ammunition, and transport services?

Douglas Farah: Viktor Bout was a unique creature born of the end of Communism and the rise of unbridled capitalism when the Wall came down in the early 1990s. He was a Soviet officer, most likely a lieutenant, who simply saw the opportunities presented by three factors that came with the collapse of the USSR and the state sponsorship that entailed: abandoned aircraft on the runways from Moscow to Kiev, no longer able to fly because of lack of money for fuel or maintenance; huge stores of surplus weapons that were guarded by guards suddenly receiving little or no salary; and the booming demand for those weapons from traditional Soviet clients and newly emerging armed groups from Africa to the Philippines. He simply wedded the three things, taking aircraft for almost nothing, filling them with cheaply purchased weapons from the arsenals, and flying them to clients who could pay. His background is difficult to ascertain. He is said by U.S. intelligence officials to be the product of an "immaculate conception." He was not, and then he was. He has provided no stories of his youth, very few personal details. He was, according to his multiple passports, born in 1967 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, the son of a bookkeeper and an auto mechanic. He graduated from the Military Institute on Foreign Languages, a well-known feeder school for Russian military intelligence, and is known to have a true gift for languages.

MJ: What is the evidence of a relationship between Bout and Russian military intelligence, the GRU?

DF: It is highly unlikely he could have flown aircraft out of Russia and acquired huge amounts of weapons from Soviet arsenals without the direct protection of Russian intelligence, and, given his background, the GRU seems the most likely candidate. He was providing not solely AK-47s and massive amounts of ammunition, as his competitors were, but attack helicopters, anti-aircraft systems, anti-tank mine systems, sniper rifles, and items that are much harder to acquire. The clearest, most recent direct tie came through an obscure investigation in the United States carried out by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Last year the ATF was investigating sales of $240,000 worth of night vision scopes and paramilitary gear from a small sporting goods store in Pennsylvania, and discovered that the items had been illegally shipped to a company that is controlled by an elite Russian intelligence counterterrorism group. The money was paid through a Bulgarian holding company controlled by Bout.

MJ: Your reporting indicates that Bout has supplied not only the Taliban, Liberia's Charles Taylor, and Congolese warlords, but the U.S. Army and its contractors as well. Can you describe how the U.S. government and U.S. contractors have responded to revelations about who they are doing business with?

DF: The U.S. government response to revelations of the use of Viktor Bout to fly for government contractors in Iraq (not just a few flights, but hundreds, and perhaps a thousand) has been mixed. Bear in mind most of these flights occurred after President Bush had signed an executive order making it illegal to do business with Bout, because he represented a security threat to the United States. The State Department, under a congressional inquiry initiated by Senator Russell Feingold, found it had used Bout companies, acknowledged it, and stopped. Paul Wolfowitz, while at DOD, did not respond to queries for nine months, then acknowledged that DOD contractors had subcontracted to Bout companies. Despite the public revelation, the congressional inquiry, the executive order, and a subsequent Treasury Department order freezing the assets of Bout and his closest associates, the flights continued for many months, at least until the end of 2005. The Air Force cut him off immediately, but other branches of the military continued to use him.

MJ: Any evidence that Bout is authorized by governments to play this murky role because he is as useful as he is dangerous?

DF: Bout, through an intermediary, approached the CIA and FBI immediately after 9/11, and offered his services in helping to oust the Taliban if he were paid tens of millions of dollars for his efforts. Negotiations were serious and lasted several months, but we do not know what, if any, parts of the deal he offered were accepted. There is no doubt he has benefited from the schizophrenic policies of the U.S. government (the Treasury and State departments going after him, while DOD pays him money to fly), but it is difficult to say whether that is the result of calculation or just sloppiness.

MJ: Is he actually under indictment anywhere?

DF: There is an Interpol Red Notice on Bout issued in 2002 requiring his arrest, requested by the Belgians for money laundering. The Russians have not honored it.

MJ: Where does he reside and how easily does he move around? What countries' passports does he travel on?

DF: He resides in Moscow and travels abroad with some frequency, despite being on a U.N.-sanctioned travel-ban list. He has had five different passports we know of, all from the USSR or Russia, but there could be more.

MJ: What does it mean that he can operate through a string of front companies so successfully?

DF: Bout's ability to continue to function shows primarily that the post-Cold War, state-centric view of the world and transnational threats has been rapidly and totally outstripped by the rapidly changing world. Intelligence services and law enforcement agencies are operating in the 20th century, while Bout and those like him are operating in the 21st. With the ability to register aircraft on line, move money electronically in the blink of an eye, and set up proxy shell companies around the world, he will remain far ahead of efforts to stop him unless he gets sloppy.

MJ: What does it say about the larger system, which does not rein him in?

DF: Bout's operations tell us that demand for important commodities, particularly weapons, is at a premium. He could arm different sides of the same conflicts because he was efficient and reliable. That is why they called him "the mailman," because he always delivered. With the rapid proliferation of failed and failing states across the globe and the rise of religious and economic militias, guns have become a vital commodity. One of the biggest dangers is that, given Bout's network, access, and capabilities, is that he would be ideally situated to move nuclear material or other highly dangerous weapons or components that could inflict huge damage.

MJ: You mentioned that Bout was supplying Hezbollah, presumably with authorization from the Russian government. Do you believe this indicates a kind of proxy war between the U.S. and Russia in Lebanon via Israel and Hezbollah, or that it is just a reflection of Russian defense manufacturers seeking a profit outlet for their supplies?

DF: I think it is both. Russia has long had an interest in Hezbollah and has given the group support, which it continues to do. It is clear from the large stockpiles of new armor-piercing Russian missiles that Hezbollah used last year. But such activities both project Russian power, at a time when the Putin government is desperate to project Russian power across the world, as well as provide outlets for the sale of Russian weapons.

MJ: What is the difference between the gray arms market and the black market?

DF: It is important to note, as we do in the book, that much of what Viktor Bout does is, while reprehensible, not illegal. For example, it violates international norms to break U.N. weapons sanctions on a given country, but there is no penalty attached to those violating the sanctions regime. What specific crime was committed in what country? If a weapons merchant uses a forged End User Certificate to purchase weapons, should the country selling the weapons be penalized, should the merchant be punished, or should the country of the forgery be pursued? The answer, of course, is none of the above. No one is penalized, although the law was broken numerous places. This is the grey market, where one may know the weapons are destined for Liberia, but the EUC says it is for Rwanda, and the Bulgarian company selling the weapons, while knowing the EUC is likely a forgery, proceeds with the sale anyway. The black market is selling weapons in a clearly illegal and punishable way.

MJ: What's been the reaction in U.S. government circles to your book? Is there more U.S. and international resolve to constrain Bout, or the same half measures?

DF: There has been no official reaction. Treasury and those who went after Bout are happy; there are some in the Pentagon who are chagrined. The embarrassment factor for dealing with Bout is pretty high now, at least in the U.S., and there are greater efforts to make sure he is not paid with U.S. taxpayer dollars. But no pressure has been brought to bear on Russia to turn him over or rein him in, and, like the United States, much of the rest of the world wants to pretend he doesn't exist.

Laura Rozen is the National Security Correspondent for Mother Jones.

This article has been made possible by the Foundation for National Progress, the Investigative Fund of Mother Jones, and gifts from generous readers like you.

© 2007 The Foundation for National Progress

http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2007/09/viktor-bout.html

Postato da: treball a 13/09/2007 19:12 | link | commenti |
libri, testi, interviste, social, international

mercoledì, 05 settembre 2007
Hacer ahh



Por Rodrigo Fresán
desde Barcelona
Página/12, Miércoles, 05 de Septiembre de 2007

UNO Hoy se cumplen cincuenta años y millones de kilómetros recorridos por una novela que –desde su aparición, el 5 de septiembre de 1957– se niega a frenar y, cuando de tanto en tanto se detiene, lo hace apenas para llenar el tanque y seguir corriendo. Y nosotros seguimos corriendo detrás de ella para alcanzarla y subirnos y continuar dentro suyo y junto a ella. Ahora viene otra vez, oigan el rugido de su motor, contémplenla levantar el polvo de la carretera, aquí está, aquí pasa, ya pasó, seguirá pasando: On the Road, de Jack Kerouac.

DOS On the Road (“En el camino”) de Jack Kerouac es uno de esos libros que uno siempre se recuerda y se recordará leyendo y descubriendo. Ese estallido iniciático. Dónde estaba uno, qué pensaba, qué hacía y –lo más importante– qué quería hacer y ser cuando lo miró o nos miró por primera vez. On the Road es uno de esos libros/llave, que entra y gira y enciende algo que uno ya nunca va a querer apagar. Y Kerouac –quien se definía como “un extraño solitario loco místico católico”– es el cerrajero. El hombre que –en un país que creía sin dudar en el opulento Sueño Americano de la posguerra pero que a la noche gemía y se enredaba en las sábanas de la Pesadilla Atómica– le abrió la puerta a toda una generación para ir a jugar. El Trompetista de Hamelín Be-Bop. El evangelista que predicaba otro Nuevo Testamento y creía en –y aquí viene ese incandescente párrafo que todos subrayamos cuando lo leímos la primera de las muchas veces que lo leeríamos– “los locos, los locos por vivir, los locos por hablar, los locos de ser salvados y deseosos de todo al mismo tiempo, los que nunca bostezan o dicen un lugar común y que arden, arden, arden como fabulosos fuegos artificiales amarillos estallando como arañas atravesando las estrellas, y en el medio, ves como la luz azul en su centro aparece de pronto y todos hacen ahh”.

TRES Medio siglo después (aunque On the Road fuera escrita antes, en 1951, revisada muchas veces y rechazada por numerosos editores) es la hora de los festejos, de las reediciones de-luxe y canónicas y de revisitar la leyenda de un manuscrito original con forma de rollo de papel que fue subastado por 2.400.000 dólares y que suele exhibirse en bibliotecas del mundo como si se tratase de un Santo Sudario de cuya existencia nadie duda. Tampoco se cuestiona el sacrificio de su creador. Así, Kerouac no como alguien que murió por nuestros pecados pero sí como víctima propiciatoria en el altar de un mundo que suele comerse crudo y después escupir a un costado a los productos de moda. La historia puede leerse en cualquiera de sus muchas biografías: se publica On the Road, Kerouac es aclamado como algo novedoso (el perfecto Homo Beat con look de actor de cine, aunque él no fuera el primero en utilizar la etiqueta o en poner por escrito las intimidades de la secta), best-seller modesto, curiosidad para los estudios de televisión (donde los colegas lo desprecian) y una amenaza para el establishment literario, que procede a atropellarlo sin detenerse a ver exactamente qué fue eso que pisó con sus ruedas y engranajes. Está claro que buena parte de los mandamientos e instrucciones de Kerouac (cosas del tipo “Al no revisar lo que has escrito lo que le estás ofreciendo al lector no es otra cosa que la obra de tu mente durante el mismo acto de la escritura”) pueden causar más daño que otra cosa y que no son demasiado útiles a la hora de fundamentar y apuntalar un oficio literario que resista truenos y rayos. Pero también está claro que On the Road es una de esas tantas Grandes Novelas Americanas que andan sueltas por ahí.

CUATRO Son pocos los que recuerdan o saben que Jack Kerouac era un pésimo conductor al que no le gustaban los autos. Son muchos los que prefieren considerarlo –como si así lo explicaran todo– una especie de buen salvaje de las letras e ignorar que se trataba de un lector abundante y sensible y un corrector cuidadoso y prolijo (leer sus diarios y su correspondencia con Malcolm Cowley, editor de On the Road) con una idea muy clara de lo que quería y necesitaba hacer antes de ser devorado por esa criatura que él había creado y en la que se había convertido. Son todavía menos los que prefieren enterarse de que murió detestando a toda esa fauna de fieles que lo perseguía y que necesitaba adorarlo como si se tratara de una pieza de museo. Estas amnesias más o menos voluntarias por parte de segundos y terceros tienen que ver con la necesidad de imponer el personaje a la persona. Algo que suele ocurrir con los autores de libros talismánicos y “generacionales”: degeneración y combustión espontánea y por ahí anduvieron también Fitzgerald y Hemingway y Capote. Autores todos que acabaron extraviados en las fronteras que separan al creador de la creación. Henry Miller y Charles Bukowski terminaron como patéticos adictos a sí mismos. J. D. Salinger –tal vez el más cobarde o el más valiente– decidió desaparecer antes de ser procesado y consumido por sus acólitos. Dentro de la Santísima Trinidad Beatnik, Kerouac es el que sale peor parado. William Burroughs siempre fue un virus extraterrestre, Allen Ginsberg fue feliz invitándose a todas las fiestas y saliendo en todas las fotos (Beatles, Dylan, etc.), mientras que Kerouac –confundido por la fina línea que separa a la visión de la alucinación– nunca superó la muerte de su hermano de sangre y héroe Neal Cassady (el Dean Moriarty de On the Road). Y así se retiró, con 91 dólares en el banco (su fantasma hoy tiene 19.999.909 más), a emborracharse en la cocina de su madre. O frente a un televisor basura mientras escribía blues quebrados como esa memoir y adiós que es Satori en París, cuya última línea es “Cuando Dios diga: ‘Has vivido bastante’ olvidaremos todo lo que significaba esa despedida”. Entonces, cuando le preguntaban qué estaba haciendo, Kerouac respondía: “Estoy esperando que Dios muestra su cara”.

Jack Kerouac –quien vivió bastante pero no lo suficiente y buena parte de su existencia la pasó saliendo a buscarlo todo, motor de movimiento perpetuo, a toda velocidad– murió esperando. Una muerte triste. Una muerte quieta pero no tranquila. Una muerte muerta.

CINCO El otro día entré en un site donde colgaron todas las portadas de todas las ediciones de On the Road aparecidas a lo largo de cincuenta años en muchos países. Estaba la de Losada (la primera que tuve y leí) y las cuatro ediciones en inglés que tengo ahora (y, aviso, me voy a comprar la nueva versión con los párrafos eliminados en su momento por la autocensura editorial y la primera transcripción a libro del ya citado rollo). Tengo varios On the Road porque me lo he comprado varias veces, en varios lugares, por el sólo placer de volver a poseerlo y a hojearlo. Tengo el que tiene en la tapa un cuadro expresionista y abstracto, el que tiene una foto de camaradas de Kerouac y Cassady, una edición anotada y con ensayos con cubierta amarilla y tipográfica, y el que ilustra esta contratapa y que, digamos, es la irresistible encarnación Billiken para fans-fetichistas. Este último es el que he vuelto a arrancar para buscar ese fragmento y escribir estas líneas y –debí suponerlo, cabía esperarlo– ya lo estoy leyendo otra vez.

Rápido.

Más rápido todavía.

Ahh.

© 2000-2007 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-90808-2007-09-05.html

Postato da: treball a 05/09/2007 18:29 | link | commenti |
libri, testi, memoria, letterature, unforgettable

giovedì, 12 aprile 2007
Humanist and sceptic ...



Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84

Sarah Crown and agencies
The Guardian
Thursday April 12, 2007

Kurt Vonnegut, the American novelist best known for his science fiction classic, Slaughterhouse-Five, which begins with the bombing of Dresden during the second world war and goes on to offer a blackly witty investigation of fate and free will, died yesterday. According to his wife, the photographer Jill Krementz, Vonnegut had sustained brain injuries from a fall at his home in Manhattan some weeks earlier.

Vonnegut's writing career spanned more than half a century and saw him produce 14 novels (many of which were bestsellers) as well as dozens of short stories, essays and plays. He ranged from the conventional science fiction of his 1963 novel, Cat's Cradle (which hangs around the discovery of "ice-nine", a substance with the properties of water but which is solid at room temperature) to the satirical Breakfast of Champions (1973) and the semi-autobiographical Slaughterhouse-Five, the catalyst for which was his own experience as a soldier with the US 106th Infantry Division and as a prisoner of war during world war two.

Vonnegut's body of work gains internal coherence from the reappearance of key characters, from Kilgore Trout, the unappreciated science fiction writer of Breakfast of Champions, whom Vonnegut described as his alter-ego, to Trout's greatest fan, Eliot Rosewater, who features in several of Vonnegut's novels following his debut as the eponymous hero of God Bless You, Mr Rosewater (1965). Themes and concepts also resurface, from ice-nine to his ongoing occupation with the mess humankind was making of the planet.

Following the publication of his 1997 novel Timequake, which stars Kilgore Trout and in which he returned again to ideas of determinism and free will, he retired from writing novels, although he continued to publish short articles. His 2005 nonfiction collection, A Man Without a Country, in which he gave free rein to his contempt for the Bush administration (whom he described as "upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography"), became a bestseller. He called the book's success "a nice glass of champagne at the end of a life".

Away from writing novels, Vonnegut, a self-proclaimed humanist and sceptic, was an active member of the PEN writers' aid group and the American Civil Liberties Union, and replaced Isaac Asimov as honorary president of the American Humanist Association and worked as a senior editor and columnist for the politically progressive monthly magazine, In These Times, which was published by the Institute For Public Affairs.

Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis on November 11, 1922, and studied chemistry at Cornell University before joining the army. When he returned from the second world war, he married his childhood sweetheart, Jane Marie Cox, with whom he had three children (he also adopted his sister Alice's three children when she died of cancer), and worked as a reporter for Chicago's City News Bureau. He went on to work in public relations for General Electric (a job he reportedly hated). He separated from his first wife in 1970 and later married Krementz, with whom he adopted another daughter.

Vonnegut once said that, of all the ways to die, he would prefer to go out in an airplane crash on the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. He often joked about the difficulties of old age, saying in an interview with the Associated Press in 2005 that "when Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon."

 


Related material
More about Kurt Vonnegut
Vonnegut online

Extracts from Vonnegut's work
Surviving Niagara: remembering my son's breakdown
Vonnegut pays tribute to Nelson Algren

Related articles
Blog: Nicholas Lezard salutes a master of farting around
JG Ballard reviews Bluebeard


http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2055226,00.html

 


Custodians of chaos

In this exclusive extract from his forthcoming memoirs,
Kurt Vonnegut is horrified by the hypocrisy in contemporary US politics

The Guardian
Saturday January 21, 2006

"Do unto others what you would have them do unto you." A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, five hundred years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.

The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one.

We've sure come a long way since then. Sometimes I wish we hadn't. I hate H-bombs and the Jerry Springer Show

But back to people like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, each of whom have said in their own way how we could behave more humanely and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favourite humans is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana.

Get a load of this. Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was not yet four, ran five times as the Socialist party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, almost 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:

"As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.

"As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it.

"As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?

When you get out of bed each morning, with the roosters crowing, wouldn't you like to say. "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly George W Bush, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

It so happens that idealism enough for anyone is not made of perfumed pink clouds. It is the law! It is the US Constitution.

But I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened instead is that it was taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'état imaginable.

I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale".

George W Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences.

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr Hervey Cleckley, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia, published in 1941. Read it!

Some people are born deaf, some are born blind or whatever, and this book is about congenitally defective human beings of a sort that is making this whole country and many other parts of the planet go completely haywire nowadays. These were people born without consciences, and suddenly they are taking charge of everything.

PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And they are waging a war that is making billionaires out of millionaires, and trillionaires out of billionaires, and they own television, and they bankroll George Bush, and not because he's against gay marriage.

So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occupation.

They might have felt that taking our country into an endless war was simply something decisive to do. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they don't give a fuck what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilise the reserves! Privatise the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president.

The title of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury's great science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451. Four hundred and fifty-one degrees Fahrenheit is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury's novel is a municipal worker whose job is burning books.

While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

And still on the subject of books: our daily news sources, newspapers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books do we learn what's really going on.

I will cite an example: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, published in early 2004, that humiliating, shameful, blood-soaked year.

In case you haven't noticed, as the result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African-Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war-lovers with appallingly powerful weaponry - who stand unopposed.

In case you haven't noticed, we are now as feared and hated all over the world as Nazis once were.

And with good reason.

In case you haven't noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanised millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound 'em and kill 'em and torture 'em and imprison 'em all we want.

Piece of cake.

In case you haven't noticed, we also dehumanised our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class.

Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything.

Piece of cake.

The O'Reilly Factor.

So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and a Chicago paper called In These Times.

Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic New York Times guaranteed there were weapons of mass destruction there.

Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn't even seen the first world war. War is now a form of TV entertainment, and what made the first world war so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun.

Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?

Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now give up on people, too. I am a veteran of the second world war and I have to say this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine.

My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse."

Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas

Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler. What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without senses of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations, and made it all their own?

© 2005 Kurt Vonnegut
Extracted from A Man Without a Country: A Memoir of Life in George W Bush's America, to be published by Bloomsbury on February 6, price £14.99

http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,,1691370,00.html

Related links:
http://treball.splinder.com/post/6852681/Hollow+laughter

Postato da: treball a 12/04/2007 16:49 | link | commenti (17) |
libri, art , testi, memoria, letterature, genius, unforgettable, international, usa today

giovedì, 02 novembre 2006
Weddings & beheadings



You've never heard of me, but you've probably seen my work on the television news

by Hanif Kureishi
Prospect, Issue 128 , November 2006

I have gathered the equipment together and now I am waiting for them to arrive. They will not be long; they never are.

You don’t know me personally. My existence has never crossed your mind. But I would bet you’ve seen my work: it has been broadcast everywhere, on most of the news channels worldwide. Or at least parts of it have. You could find it on the internet, right now, if you really wanted to. If you could bear to look.

Not that you’d notice my style, my artistic signature or anything like that. I film beheadings, which are common in this war-broken city, my childhood home.

It was never my ambition, as a young man who loved cinema, to film such things. Nor was it my wish to do weddings, though there are less of those these days. Ditto graduations and parties. My friends and I have always wanted to make real films, with living actors and dialogue and jokes and music, as we began to do as students. Nothing like that is possible any more. Everyday we are ageing, we feel shabby. The stories are there, waiting to be told; we’re artists. But this stuff, the death work, it has taken over.

We were “recommended” for this employment, and we can’t not do it; we can’t say we’re visiting relatives or working in the cutting room. They call us up with little notice at odd hours, usually at night, and minutes later they are outside with their guns. They put us in the car and cover our heads. Because there’s only one of us working at a time, the thugs help with carrying the gear. But we have to do the sound as well as the picture, and load the camera and work out how to light the scene. I’ve asked to use an assistant, yet they only offer their rough accomplices who know nothing, who can’t even wipe a lens without making a mess of it.

I know three other guys who do this work; we discuss it among ourselves, but we’d never talk to anyone else or we’d end up in front of the camera.

Until recently my closest friend filmed beheadings; however, he’s not a director, only a writer really. I wouldn’t say anything, but I wouldn’t trust him with a camera. He isn’t too sure about the technical stuff, how to set up the equipment, and then how to get the material through the computer and on to the internet. It’s a skill, obviously.

He was the one who had the idea of getting calling cards inscribed with “Weddings and Beheadings” inscribed on them. If the power’s on, we meet in his flat to watch movies on video. When we part, he jokes, “Don’t bury your head in the sand, my friend. Don’t go losing your head now. Chin up!”

A couple of weeks ago he messed up badly. The cameras are good quality, they’re taken from foreign journalists, but a bulb blew in the one light he was using, and he couldn’t replace it. By then they had brought the victim in. My friend tried to tell the men, “It’s too dark, it’s not going to come out and you can’t do another take.” But they were in a hurry, he couldn’t persuade them to wait, they were already hacking through the neck and he was in such a panic he fainted. Luckily the camera was running. It came out underlit, of course—what did they expect? I liked it; Lynchian, I called it, but they hit him around the head, and never used him again.

He was lucky. But I wonder if he’s going mad. Secretly he kept copies of his beheadings and he plays around with them on his computer, cutting and recutting them, putting them to music, swing stuff, opera, jazz, comic songs. Perhaps it’s the only freedom he has.

It might surprise you, but we do get paid; they always give us something “for the trouble.” They even make jokes, “You’ll get a prize for the next one. Don’t you guys love prizes and statuettes and stuff?”

It’s all hellish, the long drive there with the camera and tripod on your lap, the smell of the sack, the guns, and you worry that this time you might be the victim. Usually you’re sick, and then you’re in the building, in the room, setting up, and you hear things from other rooms that make you wonder if life on earth is a good idea.

I know you don’t want too much detail, but it’s serious work taking off someone’s head if you’re not a butcher; and these guys aren’t qualified, they’re just enthusiastic—it’s what they like to do. To make the shot work, it helps to get a clear view of the victim’s eyes just before they’re covered. At the end the guys hold up the head streaming with blood and you might need to use some hand-held here, to catch everything. The shot must be framed carefully. It wouldn’t be good if you missed something.

They cheer and fire off rounds while you’re checking the tape and playing it back. Afterwards, they put the body in a bag and dump it somewhere, before they drive you to another place, where you transfer the material to the computer and send it out.

Often I wonder what this is doing to me. I think of war photographers, who, they say, use the lens to distance themselves from the reality of suffering and death. But those guys have elected to do that work, they believe in it. We are innocent.

One day I’d like to make a proper film, maybe beginning with a beheading, telling the story that leads up to it. It’s the living I’m interested in, but the way things are going I’ll be doing this for a while. Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to go mad, or whether even this escape is denied me.

I better go now. Someone is at the door.

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7916

Postato da: treball a 02/11/2006 20:01 | link | commenti |
libri, testi, social, letterature, international, multiculturalism

 

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