MarkLimacher.com

Watching the coverage of the G8/G20 on Democracy Now! this morning, one can get a glimpse of the contempt the Canadian ruling class harbors for the proletariat. The life-support-system-for-a-haircut Stephen Harper will now forever be known as the Prime Minister who presided over the “most expensive 3 days in Canadian history” ¹. If that weren’t enough, reports of activist meetings being infiltrated by police with one even being harassed by CSIS (a collection of torturing miscreants vying to be recognized as Canada’s NKVD) are now commonplace ². Then, this news emerged, indicating that the Ontario government issued a secret order allowing Toronto police to arrest anyone who fails to identify themselves. (more…)

Walking through the park yesterday I saw a group of children, each one holding onto a separate handle attached to a length of rope. They were being led around by a person I presumed was a teacher or guardian. What struck me was the voluntary component of this setup, the kids having been given the opportunity to “choose” to remain holding that piece of rope. It was like looking into a mirror. Is this not a most fitting way of describing our current modality of ‘higher education’? (more…)

Finally I have found the 1965 production in its entirety.
Who doesn’t enjoy a good Azeri musical?

So I’ve been gone for a little while, and have nothing much to show for it.
That isn’t to say I haven’t done anything mind you, because as with all such lapses in website updating, I’ve been reading new stuff, rereading old stuff, developing a bizarre respect for the work of Peter Weller, and growing hopelessly disillusioned at the point of writing music in 21st Century North America. I say this after a great deal of careful thought, but let me first clarify that I mean not to conjure a romantic ideal of Europe or South America (as many routinely accuse me of), but rather to call into question the very society I find myself at odds with day after day. I find it profoundly concerning that by and large I can count all the people who share in my musical intellectual stimulation on two or three fingers. This seems not to be the case with other expressive mediums, as it is not the movie theater with an aging audience and not enough younger participants to make up for the mounting losses (deaths).
I’ll try my best to update more often, although I did manage to post the collaboration I did with Simeon Poulin last spring.

If the history books used in American classrooms were grounded in any sort of reality, I often wonder what will be said about the age I am currently living in. Knowing that the fight to teach accuracy in schools is probably a losing battle, I wonder what lies the authors may come up with in the future to explain away the current right-wing psychopaths that have seemingly endless potential for media coverage. The incoherent verbal assaults taking place at the health care reform town hall meetings are bound to bring laughter to any reality-based person, myself included. Nothing elicits a grander guffaw than watching these encephalitic psychopaths completely mischaracterize socialism, the ‘founding fathers’, or the very Medicare they themselves receive. Our laughter must be carefully monitored, however, for it masks the precipitous horrors these people will bring to fruition. Having said that, I do recognize the necessity to express my stupefaction at the overwhelming ignorance displayed by these people.

Yes, you read correctly, I referred to the offending individuals as a collective ‘these people’, and there is a hard intention behind that. They are the genesis of a mass movement, a movement that has been gradually shaped and molded over the decades, a movement that has emerged from its adolescence with a hunger for violence.

The brains behind this movement lie in many hands, be they the practitioners of free market extremism, promulgators of the many systemic-industrial complexes, or proselytists of religious fundamentalism, but they all require the aid of the malleable. This is where the birthers, the deathers, and the tea-baggers come into the picture. The necessity of an angry mob, a collection of cognitively deficient pawns with which to direct as per your bidding, has always been necessary for those wishing to overthrow a regime of some kind. The one thing that needs to come about, however, is both a consolidation of message and the establishment of some kind of leadership, no matter how anti-establishment these people claim to be. Thus far we seem to be seeing a loose association of individuals with disparate objections, ranging anywhere from the anti-federal government, anti-tax lunatics to the viciously racist militiamen. Indeed, what seems clear at the moment is that no such consolidation seems to have happened, and frankly, it is often impossible to discern a decisive message with a great many of town-hall disruptions. Even a casual dip into Wikipedia reveals that the Sturmabteilung didn’t exactly coalesce into the kind of organization we associate with the term until 1922, by which point both the German Workers Party and the structureless pugilists had reconfigured into the NSDAP. Any further reading on Hitler’s rise to power, or any totalitarian regime for that matters, suggests the same, that consolidation of interests enables the success of a rise to power¹.

If it weren’t for disturbing trends that suggest such a cohesion is just around the corner, I might consider relaxing. Finding myself at teapartypatriots.org brought a little phrase back into my vocabulary, lost in the din of the town hall psychopaths: The 9-12 Project. Looking at the extensive list of ‘Tea Party Patriot Groups’, a.k.a. angry white idiot douchebags, the term ‘9-12’ appears more times than I am comfortable with. In case you’re still unconcerned, the The 9-12 Project is one of Glenn Beck’s masturbatory experiments in delusion that first came to my attention in March. In case you’re still vacillating on the connectivity here, I think it’s safe to say that the 9-12 project is precisely the coalescent meme necessary to bring about the dreaded consolidation. Given that Glenn Beck’s latest book, Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine (shazail!) has been on the New York Times non-fiction best sellers list for weeks², and knowing that the book ends with instructions on how to organize a 9-12 ‘club’ of your very own, my unwillingness to calm down is not a result of my own superfluous anxieties, but an objection to the unfolding of ensuing darkness.
Take a quick peek at the 9 Principles, and tell me you aren’t disturbed given specific trends in American Society (as written about here by friend of the site, Samantha Fingerhut).

1. America Is Good.

2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.
God “The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.” from George Washington’s first Inaugural address.

3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.
Honesty “I hope that I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider to be the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.” George Washington

4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
Marriage/Family “It is in the love of one’s family only that heartfelt happiness is known. By a law of our nature, we cannot be happy without the endearing connections of a family.” Thomas Jefferson

5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
Justice “I deem one of the essential principles of our government… equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political.” Thomas Jefferson

6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
Life, Liberty, & The Pursuit of Happiness “Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely to give him comfortable subsistence.” Thomas Jefferson

7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.
Charity “It is not everyone who asketh that deserveth charity; all however, are worth of the inquiry or the deserving may suffer.” George Washington

8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.
On your right to disagree “In a free and republican government, you cannot restrain the voice of the multitude; every man will speak as he thinks, or more properly without thinking.” George Washington

9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.
Who works for whom? “I consider the people who constitute a society or a nation as the source of all authority in that nation.” Thomas Jefferson³

The sun is truly setting. Brace yourselves.

I thought it would be pertinent to share this clip I stumbled across.
I was unaware until recently that a film was ever made of this magnum opus, and even then, until seeing it I couldn’t have imagined how captivating it would be on film. The version in question is Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet’s 1975 attempt at handling Schoenberg’s unfinished mammoth, Moses und Aron. Watch all the excerpts you can find online, and when you’re ready, begin the search for a copy online. I have no idea where to suggest looking as I am still without success in tracking one down. I did however manage to find a rather interesting 1975 review of the film by Richard Eder from the New York Times, and what a riot it was to partake in his editorializing. Perhaps it’s just his bemusing take on the so-called ‘experimentalism’ of the film that seems so cliche, but it more likely was a result of his bellicose remarks like:

In his latest film—it can’t be called a movie because virtually nothing moves, neither the camera nor what it is photographing — Mr. Straub has come close to purging the screen of anything to see. At the same time, he will come close to purging the movie theater of anybody to watch.¹

Enjoy.

I’ve been rather perplexed by the wishy-washy Walter Cronkite coverage since his death on July 17th, mainly the air of self-congratulation emanating from every so-called journalist when expressing their hyper-sentimentalisms of his passing.
My personal favorite was Katie Couric’s bizarre July 21st coverage of a correction issued by the New York Times. The Times was rectifying an article published shortly after his death that contained 7 factual errors. Albeit that such a high degree of factual inaccuracy in a brief obituary is incredibly amusing, I remain very confused about the importance Couric tries to fashion around the story.
When she invokes the phrase “…but I had to smile, albeit a tad ruefully, and I think he would too…”¹ she performs the journalistic equivalent of trying to imbue a series of stones with magical properties².

Two things of late have demanded a certain reflection on this matter. The first of which is the John Pilger compilation of investigative journalism pieces, Tell Me No Lies³. As I continue working my way through this book I am made aware of the ignominious quality of the journalism that totally comprises the mainstream today, and also of how devastating this is to our contemporary understanding of history. Be it the Martha Gellhorn piece Dachau that opens the anthology, to James Cameron’s The Atomic Plague, to Pilger’s own Year Zero, each lengthy account of the most confident investigative reporting reads like an account of some mythical time period, a modern day Atlantis legend where reporters went about writing in detail about matters that actually affect humanity. How we have not collectively shaped our outrage into action regarding the state of the current 4th estate should deeply shame each and every one of us.
The second thing that has caused said reflection is the Glenn Greenwald article Celebrating Cronkite While Ignoring What He Did, (sent to me by none other than eb, a commenter on the site and contributor of sorts) from Salon. Greenwald discusses the dissociative nature of the mainstream media’s coverage of Cronkite’s death, by tying in his recollection of similar sentiments surrounding David Halberstam’s death two years ago. In both instances he claims that the media used these opportunities to equate their current practices with those of Cronkite or Halberstam. Based on my own observations, this is unequivocally the case.

Couric’s use of time on national newscast to cover the correction story, and to contextually imply that Cronkite would have carried himself with the same journalistic integrity as Couric in such an instance, inspires such thorough disgust in me that I cannot describe. Reportage of a New York Times correction is what passes as a hard-hitting scoop nowadays? Are you fucking kidding me? Couric’s soiree with the US Military back in 2007 was so jammed full of sugary-sweet mouthpiecery that I wept for my lack of dental coverage. For her to carry on like that about “…Getting it first, but getting it right…”⁴ is infantile and a violent affront to my intelligence.

Greenwald quotes extensively from an article by Lewis Lapham from September of ’08, regarding the death (and masturbatory media coverage) of Tim Russert who, unlike a Cronkite or a Halberstam, is not of the same journalistic ilk. I feel the following excerpt of Lapham’s piece could not be a more fitting way to close.

On television the voices of dissent can’t be counted upon to match the studio drapes or serve as tasteful lead-ins to the advertisements for Pantene Pro-V and the U.S. Marine Corps. What we now know as the “news media” serve at the pleasure of the corporate sponsor, their purpose not to tell truth to the powerful but to transmit lies to the powerless. Like Russert, who served his apprenticeship as an aide-de-camp to the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, most of the prominent figures in the Washington press corps (among them George Stephanopoulos, Bob Woodward, and Karl Rove) began their careers as bagmen in the employ of a dissembling politician or a corrupt legislature. Regarding themselves as de facto members of government, enabling and codependent, their point of view is that of the country’s landlords, their practice equivalent to what is known among Wall Street stock-market touts as “securitizing the junk.” When requesting explanations from secretaries of defense or congressional committee chairmen, they do so with the understanding that any explanation will do. Explain to us, my captain, why the United States must go to war in Iraq, and we will relay the message to the American people in words of one or two syllables. Instruct us, Mr. Chairman, in the reasons why K-Street lobbyists produce the paper that Congress passes into law, and we will show that the reasons are healthy, wealthy, and wise. Do not be frightened by our pretending to be suspicious or scornful. Together with the television camera that sees but doesn’t think, we’re here to watch, to fall in with your whims and approve your injustices. Give us this day our daily bread, and we will hide your vices in the rosebushes of salacious gossip and clothe your crimes in the aura of inspirational anecdote⁵.

I feel it necessary to share three articles I’ve stumbled across in the past few weeks that I’ve been otherwise unable to comment on.

No. 1

As I urgently await the release of her new book (on topics similar to the ones discussed in the following article), I read Arundhati Roy’s critique of the democracy-free market synergism of our contemporary age.

No. 2

Truthdig’s marvelous Financial Meltdown 101 interface. Spend some time on here-
get lost a while.

No. 3

Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone piece about Goldman Sachs, The Great American Bubble Machine. I’m sure most of you are aware of this article by now, but it bears further mention. Sam Seder, in the final weeks of Break Room Live, interviewed Taibbi. I post this mostly to mourn the loss of Seder & Maron (yet again) from Air America Radio.

Each day I wake anew, and head furiously to the kitchen to make my coffee in anticipation of another day brimming with oppressive futility. My source of excitement lately has been a due diligence towards an alacritous autodidacticism. I drink some coffee, watch some Amy Goodman and then brace myself for some hardcore reading. I can’t find words to express how psychologically alive I’ve felt as of late, so much so that I’ve even stopped trying when others ask what I’ve “been up to”. There is, however, another more perilous reason for this inability to articulate my intellectual passion, and that is the very simple fact that so few people want to partake in it.

After reading Susan Jacboy’s The Age of American Unreason about a month ago, I was left sufficiently disturbed, enough to make several lifestyle changes, notably some serious distraction-mitigation from what she would call ‘video culture’. Her concept is not one easily summarized in brief because it refers both to technology (i.e. television, movies, computers, all screen interfaces) and behavior (i.e. constructs of importance surrounding said television shows, movies, games, etc). What was already very clear to me is that such media is now so ubiquitous, so thoroughly woven into our every day life, that to escape the oppressive forces of video culture distraction is a one-way ticket to loneliness of mind. Without respite, I can hear from the next room one of my roommates watching 6 hours of The O.C. one day, followed by 5 or 6 hours of Six Feet Under the next, followed by- you get the picture. Suspending my disbelief for a moment, let us presume we are talking about artful content (or more broadly speaking, something of craft and substance) in television media. Would it then by excusable to carry on one’s day in such a fashion? I don’t need the Jacoby to aid me in recognizing the psychological turpitude of being passively ‘engaged’ (if in fact it can be likened to engagement at all) for lengthy periods of time.

Is such a scenario a fair representation of the majority of society? The answer is yes. Absolutely without doubt. Our capitalistically predacious society makes sure that unless we are one of the sick sons-a-bitches who is able to rise to the top of the corporate oligarchy, we’re simply not going to have all that much free time on your hands. We will be working, hard, and when we are not working, we will be so physically and mentally and emotionally exhausted, we will want to forget the humiliation and dehumanization of the free market’s invisible hand wrapped tightly around our throats. And what better way to forget than to watch the screen(s) designed precisely for that purpose, so that when we do have extended free time, we not only want to “do nothing,” we have no idea how to do anything else. The down comforter of video culture is gloriously inviting, but it will smother and suck all that remains of our intellectual livelihood from our être (painfully performed by Alan Greenspan’s proboscis), and we will remain ignorant of it all.

Having long ago recognized the validity of Chomsky’s media theories (Manufacturing Consent et al.), I think a new component needs to be incorporated. It is clear we have demonstrable evidence that corporate media distorts, frames, omits, and occasionally fabricates information, but what is not clear is why there continues this stunning apathy when information about, say, the Honduras coup or the Saro Wiwa suit against Royal Dutch Shell is leaked through the protective corporate filter. It would be foolish not to acknowledge that a myriad of factors are at play in such a situation, but I would say that the insidious metastasis of video culture in our day to day life has a christ-load to do with it- why else would seemingly nobody want to talk to me about Zinn, Dennett, deLanda, E.O. Wilson, etc?