"All these batons might form, together, another human raft."

Carbonised bodies face-down in the nuclear wasteland

all the Buddhas died,

and never heard what killed them.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a double nuclear survivor, died on January 6th, aged 93

the real economy

"10) "Shuttin' Detroit Down" John Rich. On matter of national crisis and national shame, as usual, country shoots first. That doesn't mean one likes the aim (cf. Keith comma Toby), but there's something remarkable about how quick is the draw. In mid-November of 2008, the CEOs of Chrysler and GM arrived in Washington to request bailout money — in private jets. By January, the dwarfier half of Big & Rich had recorded this song. The chord progression's pretty prêt-a-porter, but it's hard not to be captivated by a song that draws its lexicon equally from talk radio (Wall Street vs. Main Street, etc) and from political economy, from whence it conjures with impressive clarity the distance between "the real economy" and finance: "pardon me if I don't shed a tear," runs the leadup to the chorus, "they're selling make-believe, and we don't buy that here." It's a wonder he doesn't mention fictitious capital. And then the chorus:
Cause in the real world they're shuttin' Detroit down
While the bossman takes his bonus pay and jets on outta town
DC's bailin' out them bankers as the farmers auction ground
Yeah while they're livin' it up on Wall Street in the New York City town,
Here in the real world they're shuttin' Detroit down.
...and then it goes into the specifics of retirement accounts! Equally remarkable for its subtlety and strangeness is the transfer that goes on almost unannounced, wherein the "real economy" is equated with the farmer who works the land — a core assumption of the genre, one might say — against the fancies of New York City bankers, but the opposite of Manhattan turns out to be not some agricultural scene, rather Motown. These places turn out to be fully swappable, because they are both the negative of fictitious capital. It's like he totally gets it about where value comes from. I mean really."
- jane dark

[watch this video:]

A Year in Cinema, 2009

The best films I saw for the first time in 2009, in rough order of preference:

Up (Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, 2009)
To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955)
Two Lovers (James Gray, 2008)
Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl (Manoel de Oliveira, 2009)
Che (The Argentine and Guerrilla) (Steven Soderbergh, 2008)
Our Daily Bread (King Vidor, 1934)
Inextinguishable Fire (Harun Farocki, 1967)
The Last Days of Disco (Whit Stillman, 1998)
Canary (Alejandro Adams, 2009)
Summertime (David Lean, 1955)
Itinéraire de Jean Bricard (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, 2008)
Their Newspapers (Harun Farocki, 1968)
Frontier of Dawn (Philippe Garrel, 2008)
Le Garcu (Maurice Pialat, 1995)
Scenes from the Class Struggle in Portugal (Robert Kramer, 1977)
Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)
They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray, 1948)
Touched in Head (Jacques Doillon, 1974)
Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, 1968)
Man's Castle (Frank Borzage, 1933)
Smorgasbord / Cracking Up (Jerry Lewis, 1983)
L'intrus (Claire Denis, 2004)
Um Filme Falado (A Talking Picture) (Manoel de Oliveira, 2003)
The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas, 2007)
Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959)
Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
Videograms of a Revolution (Harun Farocki, 1992)
Moses and Aaron (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, 1973)
The Docks of New York (Josef von Sternberg, 1928)
Ishtar (Elaine May, 1987)
Liverpool (Lisandro Alonso, 2008)
An American Tragedy (Josef von Sternberg, 1931)
Ne change rien (Pedro Costa, 2009)
Prison Images (Harun Farocki, 2000)
Rendez-vous de Juillet (Jacques Becker, 1949)
Dead End (William Wyler, 1937)
The Exploding Girl (Bradley Rust Gray, 2009)
The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein (John Gianvito, 2001)
In Comparison (Harun Farocki, 2009)
The Savage Innocents (Nicholas Ray, 1960)
Black Fury (Michael Curtiz, 1935)
Cassandra's Dream (Woody Allen, 2007)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Nicholas Stoller, 2008)
Images of the World and the Inscription of War (Harun Farocki, 1988)
Broken Embraces (Pedro Almodovar, 2009)
The Inglorious Bastards (Enzo G. Castellari, 1978)
Respite (Harun Farocki, 2007)
Superbad (Greg Mottola, 2007)
An Image (Harun Farocki, 1983)
Beeswax (Andrew Bujalski, 2009)
El cant dels ocells (Albert Serra, 2008)
American Madness (Frank Capra, 1932)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (David Yates, 2009)
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Red Letter Media, 2009)
Nathalie Granger (Marguerite Duras, 1972)
The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986)
The Danish Poet (Torill Kove, 2006)
Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (Hara Kazuo, 1974)
Impolex (Alex Ross Perry, 2009)
Bluebeard (Catherine Breillat, 2009)
Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist (Peter Sollett, 2008)
Unas fotos en la ciudad de Sylvia (Jose Luis Guerin, 2007)
Cours du soir (Nicolas Ribowski, 1967)
One P.M. (Jean-Luc Godard and D.A. Pennebaker, 1972)
Maneater (Timothy Busfield, 2009)
7 Women (John Ford, 1966)
In The Country (Robert Kramer, 1966)
Let's Get Started (Azazel Jacobs, 2008)
The Whirled (Ken Jacobs, 1956 - 1963 / 2004)
Little Miss Sunshine (Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, 2006)
Black Legion (Archie Mayo, 1937)
Night Nurse (William A. Wellman, 1931)
Crawford (David Modigliani, 2008)
Wall Street (Oliver Stone, 1987)
No Greater Glory (Frank Borzage, 1934)
Medicine for Melancholy (Barry Jenkins, 2008)
The Taste of Life (Harun Farocki, 1979)
Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976)
The Pleasures of the Flesh (Oshima, 1965)
You Won't Miss Me (Ry Russo Young, 2009)
Eros Plus Massacre (Yoshida Yoshishige, 1969)
Three on a Match (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932)
Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine, 2009)
Don't Let Me Drown (Cruz Angeles, 2009)
I'm No Angel (Wesley Ruggles, 1933)

"Every day is Ashura, every land is Karbala"

"Yazid is a transgressor, a drunkard, killer of innocent people and an open sinner. A person like me can never give allegiance to persons like him." - Husayn ibn Ali*




“I will kill, I will kill; he who has killed my brother!”
[a slogan, also, of the 1979 Islamic Revolution]

“I will kill, I will kill; he who has killed my brother!”


“I will kill, I will kill; he who has killed my brother!”

Non-violence:

“Velesh kon! Velesh kon!” -- “Let him go! Let him go!”


a wounded man. a seized police helmet. a protestor's blood. a burning police station.

"I never revolted in vain, as a rebel or as a tyrant, but I rose seeking reformation for the nation of my grandfather Muhammad. I intend to enjoin good and forbid evil, to act according to the traditions of my grandfather, and my father Ali ibn Abi Talib." - Husayn ibn Ali

"Oh people, the Messenger of God said: Whoever sees an aggressive tyrant that legalizes the forbiddens of God, breeches divine laws, opposes the tradition of the Prophet, oppresses the worshippers of God, and does not concede his opposition to God in word or in deed, surely Allah will place that tyrant (in the Hell) where he deserves." - Husayn ibn Ali

"Death with honor is better than a life of degradation." - Husayn ibn Ali

Ali Mousavi, nephew of Mir-Hossein Moussavi, killed on Dec 27, 2009.

 

People ask them 'why do you do this to your people?' and the riot guards ask for forgiveness, 'Bebakhshid' they can be heard to say.

'You are Yazid's - the Khalif against whom the Ashura uprising took place - forces', the woman shouts at them. One of the protesters then reassures them that they will not be beaten up, all they have to do is say Khamenei is a bastard. The woman can then be heard saying 'All you can do is kill your people is it?' and again they plead saying 'Please We are not killers'.

A reader adds:

What he leaves out is that the young woman who is heard towards the end yells "Are you only brave on your motorbike, you piece of shit?!" before apparently kicking him as a man tells her to stop.

"Those who were at the forefront of the struggle against Shah's regime, vividly remember the days of Ashoura in 1963, when even the Shah respected the sanctity of the holy day and only arrested the leaders of the opposition in the following days.
How is it that a regime born out of Ashura protests [like that of 1963] is now sending bunches of thugs to the streets and shedding people's blood on the day of Ashura? ...
I can only cry out Imam Hossein's cry [killed in the day of Ashura in 7th century]:
"Even if you don't have faith at least respect other's freedom!""
 - Mehdi Karroubi

 

5 dead at least, confirmed in the English-language press -- as of now.

more:
Jon Jost
Revolutionary Road...
Andrew Sullivan
Iran News Now
Niusha Boghrati
GREENUNITY4IRAN
Jonbeshe Rahe Sabz
onlymehdi
The Lede


*Ashura is the day of remembrance of Husayn ibn Ali, slain by the forces of Yazid at the Battle of Karbala. Ashura, this year, fell on December 27, 2009. All images/text/video above, save the quotes from Husayn ibn Ali, from that same date.

a gathering up of skirts and a careful picking of way...

    "The living that throng Broadway care little perhaps for the Dead at Antietam, but we fancy they would jostle less carelessly down the great thoroughfare, saunter less at their ease, were a few dripping bodies, fresh from the field, laid along the pavement. There would be a gathering up of skirts and a careful picking of way..."      
- The New York Times, October 1862
[via Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others]

Letters from Fontainhas: Three Films by Pedro Costa

Letters from Fontainhas:
Three Films by Pedro Costa

We are still with you

It's Hell Down Here

human dignity

"I'm a school photographer and will never forget the picture I took of a little girl with luekemia. This 10-year-old, came up to my camera sat down and whipped her wig off. I stood there in shock for a second. To this she responded "I want to be remembered as me. Not as the girl with the wig" 

I went home a different person that day.  I'm proud to say that picture was not airbrushed."

[via PostSecret, link currently inactive]

Welcome to the class system in action.

Goldman, Fed, Citi Getting Preferential Allotments of H1N1 Vaccine

savings books and Sunday suits

Buddha’s Example of the Burning House

Gothama, the Buddha, taught
The wheel of desire on which we are bound,
And bade us
Put off desire, and thus without it
Go into the Nothing that he called Nirvana,
And one day some disciples asked him:
Master, what is it like, this Nothing?
We all wish to put off desire, as you bade us, but tell us
If this Nothing, into which we go,
Is a kind of oneness with all creation,
As if a man lay in water, limbs at ease, at midday,
Empty of thought, lay lazy in water, or sank into sleep,
Scarce knowing if someone tucked a blanket round him, so deep was he under;
Tell us if it is a pleasant thing, this Nothing, a good thing,
Or if it is simply nothingness, cold, empty, without meaning.

The Buddha was a long time silent, then shrugged.
There is no answer to your question.

But in the evening when they were gone
Buddha sat under the breadfruit tree and gave to the others,
Those who had not asked, the following example:
Once I saw flames licking the roof of a house,
And when I went to it I saw that there were men inside.
I called to them that the roof was burning.
But they were in no hurry.
One, while the fire singed his very brows,
Asked me what it was like outside, If it was raining still,
And if the wind had stopped, if there was another house nearby
And suchlike things.
I did not answer him and came away.
Truly, my friends, to the indifferent who see no need for change
Have I nothing to say. Thus, Gothama, the Buddha.

And we too, no more concerned with the arts of patience,
Rather with the arts of impatience, of maniford means to improve man’s lot,
Teach him to life away his worldly suffering,
We too to those, who, when any day the bombs may fall upon the cities,
Ask us what savings books and Sunday suits will be like in the new society,
To them have we little to say.

- Bertolt Brecht
[The New Reasoner 3 1957-58]

Ulm 1592.

Ulm 1592.

Said the Tailor to the Bishop:
Believe me, I can fly.
Watch me while I try.
And he stood with things
That looked like wings
On the great church roof –
That is quite absurd
A wicked, foolish lie,
For man will never fly,
A man is not a bird,
Said the Bishop to the Tailor.

Said the People to the Bishop:
The Tailor is quite dead,
He was a stupid head.
His wings are rumpled
And he lies all crumpled
On the hard church square.

The bells ring out in praise
That man is not a bird
It was a wicked, foolish lie,
Mankind will never fly,
Said the Bishop to the People.

- Bertolt Brecht

[The New Reasoner 3 1957-58]
{Thanks Ben}