The day began wonderfully; I checked my latest diary entry on www.eurotrib.com : Haunted by Philosophers (also posted here), a bit apprehensive that it might have been criticised or ignored. In fact it had been supported as a recommended diary by 11 members and the first comment was this:
"As the proprietor of ProgressiveHistorians, a community site dedicated to the intersection of history and politics, I would be honored if you would cross-post this excellent diary there."
ProgressiveHistorians: History and Politics Of, By, and For the People by Nonpartisan (nonpartisan@progressivehistorians.com)
How encouraging !
Unfortunately I later had a dental appointment (and got soaked onthe way) to fit two crowns to implants - but the first attempt was agonising, the implant was loose. He had to remove it and I'll have to go back to the implant surgeon for a second attempt - apparently it happens only about 5% of the time. At least the second one was very well fixed and no problem. But I left feeling rather sorry for myself and needing a couple of beers.
Later I accepted the invitation and cross-posted the essay to progressivehistorians - we'll see what they make of it. Comments got a bit side-tracked on Lenin.
France remains a rather macho country - despite Royal at least getting to round two in the presidential election - so when some women saw 12 men in a kitchen they could hardly believe their eyes - and some guys wore funny aprons to show it was all a bit of a joke. It was the third of three classes in cookery and for this final one (20.4.07) we had to create a dinner for the women of the Nice AVF.
But we were very dependent on the two women running the class, who were sometimes too busy doing things to assign all of us things to do:
Some of it, like mixing dough, was fun, like being back in primary school:
I got to be the tart man- and did 7 - it was more like mass production than haute cuisine, but tasted fine:
Some took the whole thing philosophically:
"I always believe in having a glass of wine with food old boy"
The chefs and their guests - none of whom seem have reported any serious consequences:
I am haunted by philosophers. When I moved to Paris last year I rented a small house in the same road where Lenin had lived from Dec 1908 to July 1909.
It was in 1908 that Lenin wrote his philosophical work: "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism." Its merits as a work of philosophy have been questioned: e.g.:
"... the people who could find novelty and wisdom in the ideas of Mussolini and discover sense in the vapourings of the German leader, certainly should not have felt any difficulty in swallowing also that considerable amount of misinterpretation, misunderstanding, and general backwardness which mar the theoretical value of Lenin's philosophical attempt."
But at least Lenin took seriously Marx's point that: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."
Then I moved to Nice and rented an apartment just north of where Nietzsche stayed during his first visit
But Nietzsche had little respect for one of France's most famous philosophers, his demolition of Descartes's "cogito ergo sum" is a philosophical gem and a revelation when I first read it years ago:
... The people on their part may think that cognition is knowing all about things, but the philosopher must say to himself: "When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, 'I think,' I find a whole series of daring assertions, the argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible: for instance, that it is _I_ who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,' and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking--that I KNOW what thinking is. For if I had not already decided within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether that which is just happening is not perhaps 'willing' or 'feeling'? In short, the assertion 'I think,' assumes that I COMPARE my state at the present moment with other states of myself which I know, in order to determine what it is; on account of this retrospective connection with further 'knowledge,' it has, at any rate, no immediate certainty for me."
Now we've just moved to Rue Diderot ! I knew that he was one of the French philosophes and was involved in editing the Encyclopedie, but he also seems to have anticipated some of Nietzsche's ideas:
"In 1747, he wrote the Promenade du sceptique, an allegory pointing first at the extravagances of Catholicism; second, at the vanity of the pleasures of that world which is the rival of the church; and third, at the desperate and unfathomable uncertainty of the philosophy which professes to be so high above both church and world."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Diderot
and those of Darwin:
"What makes the Lettre sur les aveugles interesting is its presentation, in a distinct though undigested form, of the theory of variation and natural selection."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Diderot
Consumerism and the Diderot effect"
I didn't know that he gave his name not only to my street, but also to a phrase in marketing: "the Diderot effect" ! - and wrote what seems to be the first warning of the dangers of consumerism:
Cf:
Learning Diderot's Lesson: Stopping the Upward Creep of Desire
In the eighteenth century, the French philosopher Denis Diderot wrote an essay entitled "Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown." Diderot's regrets were prompted by a gift of a beautiful scarlet dressing gown. [!] Delighted with his new acquisition, Diderot quickly discarded his old gown. But in a short time, his pleasure turned sour as he began to sense that the surroundings within which the gown was worn did not properly reflect the garment's elegance. He grew dissatisfied with his study, with its threadbare tapestry, the desk, his chairs, and even the room's bookshelves. One by one, the familiar but well-worn furnishings of the study were replaced. In the end, Diderot found himself seated uncomfortably in the stylish formality of his new surroundings, regretting the work of this "imperious scarlet robe [that] forced everything else to conform with its own elegant tone."
Today consumer researchers call such striving for conformity the "Diderot effect." And, while Diderot effects can be constraining (some people foresee the problem and refuse the initial upgrading), in a world of growing income the pressures to enter and follow the cycle are overwhelming."
http://spot.colorado.edu/~wehr/309R13.TXT
In fact in another amazing coincidence, one of the first things bought for me by Montserrat (in Venice in December) was a magnificent red dressing gown !
The new TV lures us into the land of happy zombies
Sarkozy - champion of consumerism
This of course brings us back to the current election campaign in France, where Sarkozy on the Right is in favour of taking France into a future more like the Anglo-saxon model, though he has to make gestures towards retaining traditional French culture. Thus he argues for a "rupture" with the old system, but promises that it will be a "rupture tranquille". Les Guignols, the TV puppet satire show, had famous French TV anchor Poivre ask Puppet Sarkozy about this and he said "Yes, I'm relaxed, look, I have my hands in my pockets" - or will they be in ours? Of course he's generally in favour of business, or, as he would say, modernizing France, so the people trying to get us to buy new dressing gowns, and to generally increase our participation in the consumerist culture will be happy. Diderot warned of the likely consequences:
"My luxury is brand new and the poison has not yet acted. But who knows what will happen with time? What can be expected of he who has forgotten his wife and his daughter, who has run up debts ..."
The Hollywood Ten and the Blacklist Recently I was enjoying one of our recent purchases, a TV set (we had seen a TV consumer programme which said that the optimal size for a set was about 80 cm, so at least we didn't go for the giant screens) and there was a programme on some of those influenced by the philosophy of Marx, and so against consumerism, i.e. the Hollywood Ten, a period which has echoes today in the US (hence the contemporary relevance of Clooney's excellent "Good Night and Good Luck" set in that period).
In fact the Blacklist had some very good consequences for some of them - they got of the US for a while and enjoyed living in England, Spain and France, some of them writing scripts under pseudonyms, and, given the power of the dollar at the time, living quite well.
Ben and Norma Barzan didn't get paid for scripting the film "Christ in Concrete", shot in England and directed by Edward Dmyytryk. Instead they got a long, paid holiday in Paris, where they met the cultural eltite, including Picasso, who said to them: You are like me - exiles". Ben objected that they'd only been in France two months, and Picasso went round introducing them as "The exiles who don't know they are exiles." He was right, they were put on the Blacklist and stayed in France for 30 years, where they remained friends with Picasso and for a while had a house just 400 yards from his at Mougins. By another coincidence we were planning a trip to Mougins soon, but had no idea that people like the Barzans had lived there.
"Christ in Concrete" - a suppressed masterpiece
I'd never heard of "Christ in Concrete", despite having been a media studies lecturer and left-wing; but that's not so surprising, as this excellent review of a recent DVD release of the film points out:
"All Day has outdone itself with this release, an almost totally unknown film of excellent quality and considerable significance. The 1949 Christ in Concrete was hounded from American screens after one or two bookings. Its director, writer, and several cast members had filmed it in England after being driven from Hollywood by the blacklist. This absorbing emotional experience is a socially conscious scream by artists not yet ready to surrender. The disc cover calls it a 'suppressed master work', which for once is no exaggeration.
Director Edward Dmytryk eventually recanted and named names, thus reclaiming a Hollywood career for himself while earning the scorn of those he betrayed. The result was that Christ in Concrete was never re-discovered. Except for two brief weeks in a tiny New York theater in 1949, and one museum showing in 1975, it has barely been shown in America - and never shown on television.
... In the blacklist-crazed late 40s, a film didn't have to spout anti-capitalist slogans to be refused exhibition. Movies concerned with working realities always walked on thin ice. When old James Cagney pictures examined poverty, they treated it in Horatio Alger terms - slums were a great place to learn character and were prime breeding grounds for priests and violin soloists. Movies implying that basic social change might be needed just didn't get made. Over at MGM, labor concerns were often portrayed as Red agitation - see 1935's Riffraff, where we are invited to cheer as thug Spencer Tracy roughs up a labor organizer... The show doesn't narrow its viewpoint to the approved movie fantasy of happy American living.
... The other extras are a gold mine of insights and revelations. Norma Barzman, the screenwriter's widow, is the star attraction on a commentary [as she was in the programme I saw on French TV] ... the book [is] a key piece of literature in the Italian-American experience, a direct inspiration for the Neorealist film movement in Italy. Norma's story of the Blacklist is one of the best first-hand accounts I've heard. Still fiery on the subject, she's an original 'progressive' from the 30s who has opinions on everything ..."
http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s862christ.html
What a shame that such people were silenced for so long. But then she's lived in France for 30 years, where lots of people have opinions on everything and it's a country where philosophy is taken seriously - an American constrasts this with the US (and the same applies to the UK):
Sarkozy v the French philosopher Michel Onfray
"A little more Sarkozy vs. Onfray philosophy debate:
Sarkozy then says that he has never heard anything as absurd as Socrates’ “Know yourself” “This admission turns me to ice" [Onfray:] "...In other words this person who wants to lead the destinies of the French nation believes that knowledge of oneself is a vain undertaking?” Onfray reminds his readers that the last three heads of state have all had need of expert psychological help at different times during their mandate. Clearly Sarkozy feels this sign of fragility is not for him.
Struck by the cultural differences again. We'd never have an atheist philosopher arguing phil. with a conservative pres. candidate here. And criticizing the candidate for not itnending to undergo psychoanalysis while in office?
...a note on American philosophers' view of the French. By and large US phil. academics are jealous of the greater role philosophy plays in public life there. This Onfay fellow had a recent book that sold 300,000 copies and was tops on the non-fiction, best-selling list in France. Plus Onfay is regularly all over TV. How many people in the US can even name a living, practicing philosopher?"
Onfray's account of the discussion (mostly Sarkozy on the attack according to Onfray) is damning:
"J’avance une autre phrase. Même traitement, flots de verbes, flux de mots, jets d’acides. Une troisième. Idem. Je commence à trouver la crise un peu longue. De toute façon démesurée, disproportionnée.
Si l’on veut être Président de la République, si l’on s’y prépare depuis le berceau, si l’on souhaite présider les destinées d’un pays deux fois millénaires et jouer dans la cour des grands fauves de la planète, si l’on se prépare à disposer du feu nucléaire ... alors comment peut on réagir comme un animal blessé à mort, comme une bête souffrante..."
France needs philosophers, not political animals of the Right like this. Segolene Royal was on TV Fance2 (25.4.07) and came over as a very bright, but very humane person; preferring encouragement rather than punishment. One imagines that she warms to the injunction "Know thyself" and that, unlike Sarkozy she is not afraid to do so.
Onfray himself is quite a character, almost combining Nietzsche and Lenin:
"... a self-described "Nietzschian of the left", except that Onfray is also "radically libertarian socialist". Thus he is also rather like one of the few people I really respect, Noam Chmsky, but with added French hedonism:
"Onfray's philosophical project is to define an ethical hedonism, a joyous utilitarianism, and a generalized aesthetic of sensual materialism that explores how to use the brain's and the body's capacities to their fullest extent -- while restoring philosophy to a useful role in art, politics, and everyday life and decisions. All this presupposes, in Onfray's philosophy, a militant atheism and the demasking of all false gods [like Nitzsche]..."
http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue40/Ireland40.htm
But also with a popularity in France, which even a Chomsky cannot achieve in the context of US media control and philistinism (see above). Like Chomsky he isn't interested in celebrity for its own sake and is something of a workaholic (despite the hedonism):
"Onfray is a well- known figure in France - not just through his many books, which avoid academic cant and are rendered in an elegant but accessible, sparkling prose that is admired even by critics who abhor his ideas - but as a frequent guest on French TV's numerous literary and intellectual chat shows. The national public radio network France Culture annually broadcasts his course of lectures to the Universite Populaire on philosophical themes. But Onfray has deliberately rejected the incestuous and corrupt Parisian mediatic-politico-academic microcosm and its seductive but ephemeral blandishments, and insists on living in the small Normandy town of Argentan where he was born, just 57 km. from Caen. Free from the distractions of urban mundanities, Onfray devotes his time exclusively to his intellectual work, which helps explain his astonishing output at such a relatively young age."
... Onfray's latest book, Traité d'Athéologie (Paris, Editions Grasset), became the number one best-selling nonfiction book in France for months when it was published in the Spring of 2005 (the word "atheologie" Onfray borrowed from Georges Bataille)."
http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue40/Ireland40.htm
Onfray has helped rescue one of France's earliest atheists and radical thinkers, Jean Meslier:
I. Of a Certain Jean Meslier
"HOW ASTONISHING that the prevailing historiography finds no place for an atheist priest in the reign of Louis XIV. More than that, he was a revolutionary communist and internationalist, an avowed materialist, a convinced hedonist, an authentically passionate and vindictively, anti-Christian prophet, but also, and above all, a philosopher in every sense of the word, a philosopher proposing a vision of the world that is coherent, articulated, and defended step by step before the tribunal of the world, without any obligation to conventional Western reasoning.
Jean Meslier under his cassock contained all the dynamite at the core of the 18th century. This priest with no reputation and without any memorial furnishes an ideological arsenal of the thought of the Enlightenment's radical faction, that of the ultras, all of whom, drinking from his fountain, innocently pretend to be ignorant of his very name. A number of his theses earn for his borrowers a reputation only won by usurping his work. Suppressed references prevent the reverence due to him."
http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue40/Onfray40.htm
What a contrast between Meslier's obscurity and Onfray himself, a star TV intellectual who uses the profits from his best-selling books to fund radical education and a popular philosophical community:
"Onfray has never forgotten his underclass origins, and his dedication to helping the young of the left-out classes is admirable and inspiring. The Université Populaire, which is open to all who cannot access the state university system, and on principle does not accept any money from the State -- Onfray uses the profits from his books to help finance it -- has had enormous success. Based on Onfray's book La Communauté Philosophique: Manifeste pour l'Université Populaire (2004), the original UP now has imitators in Picardie, Arras, Lyon, Narbonne, and at Mans in Belgium, with five more in preparation."
http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue40/Ireland40.htm
I wouldn't be surprised if many streets are called "Rue Onfray" in future, in a France made even more philosophy-friendly by him, and, I hope, less friendly to demagogues like Sarkozy.
I met Tom, an American, at the Acceuil Villes Francaises in Nice. He suggested that he and a female journalist who is interested in Chomsky (who wishes to remain anonymous, so let's call her J ), and I meet for a chat in the bar at the Negresco - what else ? As George Clooney would say.
Tom had also just been through the fatiguing business of looking for a new apartment and I was tired from the process of moving into our new apartment.
However J is refreshingly lively and argumentative, so we soon got into a debate about the usual separation in American journalism of reporting and editorials, which J tended to support and which I opposed, and we discussed objectivity - usually identified (wrongly in my view) with balance, neutrality and impartiality.
Like me, J is an admirer of Robert Fisk, a journalist working for The Independent who has lived in Lebanon for a long time, while doing excellent reporting on the Middle East. But, as I pointed out, Fisk was also against the usual US fact/opinion distinction and the usual interpretation of objectivity as "balance":
Fisk and objectivity
"When I was close to a pizzeria bombing in Israeli West Jerusalem in 2001, in which 20 were killed, more than half children, I didn't give half the time to Hamas. In 1982, in Sabra and Shatila, I wrote about the victims, the dead who I physically climbed over and the survivors. I did not give 50 per cent to the Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia who massacred them nor to the Israeli army who watched the murders and did nothing.
In the realm of warfare, which represents the total failure of the human spirit, you are morally bound as a journalist to show eloquent compassion to the victims, to be unafraid to name the murderers, and you're allowed to be angry. The waitress who's serving us coffee, the taxi driver who brought me here, they have feelings about atrocities. Why shouldn't we?"
"It's our job (as journalists) to challenge the centers of power, and to describe with our own vividness the tragedies and injustice and viciousness of the world, and to try and name the bad guys," Fisk says in an interview in San Francisco. "American journalists won't say what I can say. I think the New York Times should be called, 'American officials say.' At least, you'd know what you were reading. If journalism is about writing (stories) that look like government reports, then I'll go and do gardening or something."
Fisk's critics believe he's a journalistic provocateur who's blatantly anti-United States and anti-Israel. But Fisk is perhaps Britain's most acclaimed foreign correspondent. He has won the British Press Awards' International Journalist of the Year honor (the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize for foreign reporting) seven times...
... If Fisk were working for a daily U.S. paper, his dispatches would always be pushed to the opinion pages, where they'd be treated as interpretive journalism. The fact that Fisk's stories usually appear in the main news section of the Independent is galling to readers who disagree with his views.
Gellhorn was also a much-admired journalist who had no time for conventional notions of objectivity and was more concerned with telling the truth which, as Fisk has said, may involve naming the "bad guys":
"Martha Gellhorn (8 November 1908 - 15 February 1998) was an American novelist, travel writer and journalist, considered to be one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century. She reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career. Gellhorn was also the third wife of American novelist Ernest Hemingway, from 1940 to 1945. At the age of 89, ill and nearly completely blind, she ended her life by taking a poison pill.
... Gellhorn remained a committed leftist throughout her life and was contemptuous of those, like Rebecca West, who became more conservative. She considered the so-called objectivity of journalists “nonsense”, and used journalism to reflect her politics."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Gellhorn
She was still working aged 87:
"... In a few weeks, she said, she would be flying to Brazil to research an article about the murder of street children. While there, she hoped to keep herself sane and fit by snorkeling as much as possible. Her article appeared that August in the London Review of Books. It had been hell to write -- not only because she had to report on terrible crimes, but because she was trying to compose by touch-typing when she could barely see the keys and the text. But her curiosity and compassion were undimmed, even at 87, and the story justified the admiration expressed long ago by British journalist James Cameron, who observed that Gellhorn "writes with a cold eye and a warm heart."
Recently we went to see "The Departed" ("Les Infiltres" here), which is based on the Hong Kong series of three movies "Infernal Affairs".
We saw it at The Mercury in Garibaldi Square, Nice, close to an appropriately bohemian cafe where people play chess (many of them Russian emigres from nearby posters about Russian cultural events). The cinema shows an impressive number of films in VO, i.e.Version Original. In fact in another example of the beneficent, culturally-aware French state, the cinema was recently purchased by the local authority to preserve its role as a local bastion of film culture: "...un espace privilégé pour le cinema d'art et d'essai".
"The Departed" is directed by the revered auteur and film buff Martin Scorsese and finally won him a much-deserved Oscar as best director and an Oscar for best film, and various other prizes:
"...The Departed was highly anticipated when it was released on October 6, 2006 to overwhelmingly positive reviews. The film is currently one of the highest-rated wide release films of 2006 on Rotten Tomatoes at 93%, the sixth highest on Metacritic, and the twelfth highest on Yahoo! All-Time Top Movies (as determined by users).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Departed
It is set, rather unusually, in Boston, though predictably it's about cops and gangsters, and "identity", which obviously fascinates actors, and, arguably lots of Americans as they ask themselves: "Why are we so hated when we're the good guys just trying to spread freedom and democracy?"
Matt Damon becomes a cop but works for gangster boss Jack Nicholson, while Lionardo DiCaprio comes from a family with criminal members, but really wants to be a cop, and is persuaded to infiltrate Costello's's gang.
FBI informer
While the film has made a lot of money, as well as winning four Oscars and had a great deal of critical success, some audience views on the internet were more critical: e.g. Jack Nicholson is just a caricature of Jack; holes in the plot and implausibilities - e.g. one person thinking it almost impossible Jack's character would be an FBI informer. However the latter critical comment is wrong - at least about the character that Nicholson's Costello is based on, cf.:
"When Howie Winter and most of his organization's leadership were sentenced for fixing horse races in 1979, the FBI persuaded Federal prosecutors to drop all charges against Bulger and Flemmi. Bulger and Flemmi then took over the remnants of the Winter Hill Gang and used their status as informants to eliminate competition. The information they supplied to the FBI in subsequent years was responsible for the imprisonment of several Bulger associates whom Bulger viewed as a threat. But the main victim of their relationship with the Federal Government was the Italian-American Patriarca crime family, which was based in the North End, Boston and in Federal Hill, Providence.
The two leads were happy that it offered more complexity than the average big budget Hollywood film:
Damon : “The script is really well-written and you don't really find… Leo and I read everything that comes around and you don't find characters that are this interesting and complex in movies where the budget is this high."
While Damon is from Boston, he is from a middle-class family, in fact his mother was:
..." a professor of early childhood. She specializes in nonviolent conflict resolutions, so I hear about the portrayal of violence in cinema all the time, particularly gratuitous violence, so I'm careful not to do any of that."
So I guess all that stuff in the Bourne films is not gratuitous at all. Damon also has a positive view about the message of this film:
"But the violence in this film, none of it is gratuitous and the characters all pay a price for their violence. That's a good message to send out to people - that there's a price to pay.”
Scorsese see it in a rather more nihilistic way, and makes specific links with the wider political context:
"Don't ask me - I'm just the director"
"As we were making it I'm realizing that we're in a moral Ground Zero in a way. Almost none of the characters really, maybe Billy [DiCaprio’s character], maybe the doctor [played by Vera Farmiga], she feels a certain way about morality, but she makes mistakes. She learns about herself; she's duplicitous too, in a way. It's a world where morality no longer exists. Costello knows this. I think he's almost above it. He knows that God doesn't exist anymore in the world that they're in. It’s the old story: in order to know you have a problem first you have to know you have a problem. You really do, and this is my own take. Bill [the scriptwriter], I'm sure, has his own. But I felt kind of despair that's reflected in the story in the characters, and how they all interact with each other. ... I think for me it just is a sadness and a sense of despair since we've been in this situation since September 11th. Somehow this all came together and that's what kept me going in depicting this world sort of like a moral Ground Zero.”
In fact it ends (don't read on if you want to see it) with justice finally being done - but by a guy who has had to become a rogue cop to do it (a bit like like Dirty Harry). It's the usual - the good little guy is obstructed and overruled by the corrupt/incompetent bosses, but does the right thing - with a gun - this is the American way.
Nicholson was concerned that his character might not seem frightening enough, after all he can only maintain his control if he is feared by those he exploits and offers "protection":
DiCaprio: "For me, there were a number of different scenes [with Nicholoson] where I had no idea what was going to happen. One scene in particular, the prop guy sort of… We did the scene one way and I remember Jack speaking to Marty because he said he didn't feel that he was intimidating enough."
The next day there was one of those wonderful bits of serendipity, something on the internet led me to an interview with Chomsky - which included his non-standard view about the first Gulf War. It wasn't really about oil, he said, but about something different. Many know that Chomsky sees American corporations and the governments which largely represent their interests as little more than gangsters, and I've read a lot of Chomsky, but never seen him make the link between governments and someone like Costello (Nicholson) so clearly:
HG: What is that something different?
NC: It's what they call credibility. Credibility means people have to understand that you don't disobey the master. Since we're the world's dominant power, it's extremely important that we run the world the way any Mafia boss runs his own territory. Let's take the Mafia analogy: Suppose you're in charge, and some storekeeper doesn't pay the protection money. You don't just go in and take the money. You make an example of him. You send people in to smash him to pieces so that everybody else understands that's not the right kind of behaviour. That’s called credibility. In effect, the whole nuclear system is about this – about credibility. How do you make people properly afraid of us? Because nuclear weapons are always hanging in the background. Therefore, we have to have a posture that's 'irrational and vindictive'. People have to understand that some elements are 'out of control' and then they'll be afraid. And that makes perfect sense. Why do we need credibility? Well, there you get into other things. But the immediate policies are mostly just making sure that people don't do the wrong thing.
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/2002----.pdf
The new credibility of Pax Americana through "a horrible example"
To most people, especially in the US, this will sound like a typically bizarre leftist theory and they instinctively react: "WE wouldn't act like that !" Even on the Left it's usually explained in terms of Iraqi oil, and control of the Middle East reserves in general (which are important factors).
But the same sort of explanation as that given by Chomsky was offered for the more recent attack on Iraq, by Gwynne Dyer, a military historian who was a lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, England (which doesn't tend to employ leftists) and later freelance writer on international relations. In "Future:Tense, The Coming World Order", he too says that oil was not the primary motivation (though it was obviously a significant factor):
"The end of the Cold War destroyed the basis for the existing version of Pax Americana, but at the same time it seemed to enhance America's relative military power to the point where no other country in the world could defy it. ... the task was therefore to find a new rationale for America's immense military effort and its worldwide military presence. The 'rogue states with WMD' might work with the US domestic audience, but it just wouldn't fly with other governments. In fact, there was no cover story that they would swallow: they would just have to be shown who was in charge. ... So how could the neo-conservatives let the world know in a dramatic but economical way that the rules have just changed ... One good way would be to pick some country that that has repeatedly defied the United States in the past - but isn't actually attacking it just now, for we don't want this to look like mere retaliation - and to whack it very hard. Create a horrible example of what happens to those who get out of line ... ... Iraq practically nominated itself."
pp. 119-121
http://www.cultureshop.org/details.php?code=YWAR
Authenticity not reality
The actors were impressed by Scorsese's concern with authenticity; but this is rather like naturalism; concerned with surface appearances, the streets of Boston, using real policemen, etc. But, for example, Costello was based on a real gangster boss, James "Whitey" Bulger", who was very different from the character played by Nicholson, with his constant grinning, over-the-top behaviour:
"He watched very little television besides the History Channel and was fond of reading books, especially true crime and military history. He did not drink, smoke, or use drugs."
"Bulger and his associates were looked up to and revered by several generations of South Boston youth. Those who have worked for him describe him as a benevolent but ruthless father figure who took very few steps without carefully considering all possible consequences [unlike Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al]. One former associate has described him as follows, "The more work I did for Whitey, the better I liked it. If I received a [NB] rare smile from the man, an extra bonus for a job well done, that could keep me going for days. I loved to listen to his theories about the great military strategists of the world - like Caesar, Maximus, Patton, MacArthur - and how they moved deliberately, evaluating every possible move before acting.
...Costello differs from Bulger in his lack of political connections, apart from his FBI deal."
Given his TV and reading preferences he might well have read Machiavelli, and known about this passage (which echoes the views of Chomsky and Dyer on US neo-cons):
"...Among the wonderful deeds of Hannibal this one is enumerated: that having led an enormous army, composed of many various races of men, to fight in foreign lands, no dissensions arose either among them or against the prince, whether in his bad or in his good fortune. This arose from nothing else than his inhuman cruelty, which, with his boundless valour, made him revered and terrible in the sight of his soldiers, but without that cruelty, his other virtues were not sufficient to produce this effect. And shortsighted writers admire his deeds from one point of view and from another condemn the principal cause of them..."
But, he added:
"... he must endeavour only to avoid hatred, as is noted."
Of course the US government is now much more widely hated and has a lot more to fear in future.
By a remarkable coincidence, Chomsky actually works (at MIT) only about 5 miles from the centre of activity of the gang, which went on for decades. Luckily for Chomsky he was more interested in the media in general rather than doing journalism, and in the gangsters in Washington rather than the much smaller fry a short drive from him, who threatened local reporters, resulting in little investigation by journalists.
Freedom to be largely ignored
One might say that this just proves what a wonderfully open democracy the US has, if Chomsky can relentlessly attack the government and remain unmolested. But as Chomsky also points out, the US is quite ready to to do or pay for the bloodiest attacks on its enemies abroad, but at home the system just happens to work in a way which almost filters out such dissent, not by conspiracy, as Chomsky himself stresses, but just because of the nature of the system - in education, journalism, TV, etc.
Concision as exclusion
For example, its need for "concision": Thus Chomsky would need time to explain and provide evidence for such a view as the above, but, as he points out, that's just what the US media, TV in particular, don't offer; they want concision, opinions which will fit easily between the adverts, such as mainstream views which will be readily understood and accepted by most Americans.
http://www.postmodernhaircut.com/archive_page.php?id=5 (a very funny site)
As a result the fellow MIT academic who did the interview with Chomsky, introduced it by saying something which was almost exactly what an American here in Nice had told me:
Hugh Gusterson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
"I am struck that, when I travel abroad, foreign academics and activists often ask me about my MIT colleague Noam Chomsky, whom they recognize as one of the pre-eminent intellectuals, and critics of social injustice, alive in the world today. On the other hand, when I mention him in my classes at MIT, over half the students have never heard of him, although he is unarguably the most distinguished faculty member at our university. Famed both as the originator of structural linguistics and as a formidably knowledgeable and intense critic of US military and economic intervention abroad, of the mainstream media and of Israeli repression of the Palestinians, he enjoys a strange mixture of local obscurity and global celebrity as a left-wing intellectual."
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/2002----.pdf
America is now more civilized
Despite the jokes on the www.postmodernhaircut.com site, where Chomsky is portrayed as a miserable pessimist, in fact he remains very optimistic - about people in general if not US governments and corporations. But, being a realist, he reminds us of uncomfortable truths about the recent past of the US, even in liberal Boston, before giving reasons for remaining optimistic:
"... I was here [during the Vietnam War]. Boston, the most liberal city in the country. We could not have a public demonstration against the war without it being physically broken up, often by students, until late 1966. Literally. At that time there were a couple of hundred thousand American troops rampaging around South Vietnam. The war had been around for five years. And there were hundreds of thousands of people who had already been killed. And at that time if we tried to have a meeting on Boston Common it would be broken up violently. HG: Not by the police . . . NC: Not by the police; the police were protecting us. If it hadn't been for the hundreds of State Troopers, we probably would have been killed. They didn't protect us because they liked us, but because they didn't want to see people murdered on the Boston Common. In fact, even when we tried to do it in a church, the Arlington Street Church, it was attacked, in April of '66.
HG: I was here during the Gulf War . . .
NC: See, but notice the difference. The Gulf War was probably the first war in history where the protests, massive protests, took place before the war started. Not six years later. That reflects the change in the attitude of the population. ...
HG: Do you feel the chill of the '50s returning? In a different way because orthodoxy is mediated through money and funding?
NC: It's nothing like the '50s. The whole mood of the country has shifted ... And attitudes have changed on all sorts of things. Feminist issues didn't exist, environmental issues didn't exist. The rights of Native Americans didn't exist. The opposition to repression didn't exist. The whole tenor of the culture has changed. It's become a much more civilized place. And that leads to all kinds of possibilities..."
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/2002----.pdf
How different from the pessimistic nihilism of Scorsese. But then the kind of work Scorsese wants to do requires lots of money, i.e. working within the system and that tends to set limits (see the example of "concision" above) - until the power elite decide that Iraq is a lost cause (as many of them have done already) and a new set of politicians gets into power. Then we might get a spate of films about Iraq as happened about a decade after the end of the Vietnam War, e.g. Oliver Stone's "Platoon":
Ironically what was needed in both cases was someone more like Whitey Bulger, "who took very few steps without carefully considering all possible consequences" and would have looked beyond the macho gesture of "Shock and Awe" and probably have decided attacking Iraq would only add to his problems, not solve them. If he'd made mistakes like this he'd have known he would have ended up in prison, or on the run (as he is now apparently).
Recently Chomsky gave a lecture at MIT, Boston: The Current Crises in the Middle East (September 21, 2006) where he said about Iraq:
"What should the US do at this point? There are some principles. One principle is that invading armies have no rights whatsoever: they have only obligations and responsibilities. The first obligation is to pay massive reparations for the crime of aggression, the supreme international crime, according to the Nuremberg judgment, which encompasses all evil that follows. The second obligation would be to put on trial the people responsible for the supreme international crime. That’s the first. (applause) ... "
http://readingchomsky.blogspot.com/ ( video of talk at http://mitworld.mit.edu/play/401/ )
Whitey Bulger probably wouldn't have joined in the applause, he might well have given one of his rare smiles and called it a "supreme piece of stupidity" and returned to the History Channel.
Need to know
In fact while the system leads to most Americans being ignorant of Chomsky's political work, those who run the system need to know what's going on in the world and seek the best analysis - hence Chomsky's point that one can often find useful information in the elite papers (while the tabloids keep the masses distracted and purvey the dominant ideology). This "need to know" extends to the senior ranks of the military; thus Chomsky has even given a lecture: On Just War Theory and the Invasion of Iraq - at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point ! He concluded:
"... the codification of laws of war has over time had a notable civilizing effect, but the gap between professed ideals and actual practice is much too large to be tolerated in my opinion. Thanks." (Applause)
http://readingchomsky.blogspot.com/ (Saturday, September 30, 2006)
Thurs evening we went to Pailais Mediteranee for a Celtic dance show
I was particularly pleased that in the 10 minute break we were able to get into the gaming room bar, get a drink and get back just as the show started again. After the show we went up to the bar on the third floor which has a magnificent terrace with view of the sea, though it was too cold to sit outside - must try it one afternoon.
We walked back via the port, with a full moon reflected in the sea. Another nice night.
