tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20985169560840265092024-03-12T17:47:43.292-07:00From the Clouds to the Resistance"Emancipation from the material bases of inverted truth" (Debord)ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-56813123556084560832008-06-01T20:12:00.000-07:002008-12-10T10:16:21.221-08:00Forever the Twain Have Met"From about the late 1500's to the 18th century, many thousands of European men--and women--converted to Islam. Most of them lived and worked in Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and the Rabat-Sale area of Morocco--the so-called Barbary Coast States. Most of the women became Moslems when they married Moslem men. This much is easy enough to understand, although it would be fascinating if we could trace the lives of some of them in search of some 17th century Isabelle Eberhardt. But what about the men? What caused <em>them </em>to convert? <div><br />"Christian Europeans had a special term for these men: <em>Renegadoes</em>, "renegades": apostates, turncoats, traitors. Christians had some reason for these sentiments, since Christian Europe was still at war with Islam. The Crusades had never really ended. The last Moorish kingdom in Spain, Grenada, was added to the Reconquista only in 1492, and the last Moorish uprising in Spain took place in 1610. The Ottom Empire, vigorous, brilliant, and armed to the teeth (just like its contemporary Elizabethan/Jacobean England), pressed its offensive against Europe on two fronts, by land toward Vienna, and by sea westward through the Mediterranean."<br /><br /></div><div>--Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey<em>), Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes</em>, Second Revised Edition, pp. 11-12. </div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb0mE1gmxBC6w225K7wSdl1d6b681ogaduKn-aT0ySOfRhftk2iuI4QGncpiX-AazyjZTd5qbRbC0LjOQq4UP2dqf20iIobpOJ-kn6sKL8a5Hvg2H8-KnWdBP7nZ-4Zh-6p8XXQRrMvuA/s1600-h/mehmed_vi.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5207119546795054114" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb0mE1gmxBC6w225K7wSdl1d6b681ogaduKn-aT0ySOfRhftk2iuI4QGncpiX-AazyjZTd5qbRbC0LjOQq4UP2dqf20iIobpOJ-kn6sKL8a5Hvg2H8-KnWdBP7nZ-4Zh-6p8XXQRrMvuA/s400/mehmed_vi.jpg" border="0" /></a> <div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieeusbKy40QNjJ35r1LNLrgAR7bAf3GSSYUtdiq3H20XQlsUZsZUZBAbXDwZgZ7dOHp_5bVXP72SFNOfdY32MKQsujFE7fezYdtqzR4KWlhUnDnvIOFQGK4Fvhq7ujQBb13QO4Qo__zBw/s1600-h/osamabinladen.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5207119757248451666" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieeusbKy40QNjJ35r1LNLrgAR7bAf3GSSYUtdiq3H20XQlsUZsZUZBAbXDwZgZ7dOHp_5bVXP72SFNOfdY32MKQsujFE7fezYdtqzR4KWlhUnDnvIOFQGK4Fvhq7ujQBb13QO4Qo__zBw/s200/osamabinladen.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><br /></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieeusbKy40QNjJ35r1LNLrgAR7bAf3GSSYUtdiq3H20XQlsUZsZUZBAbXDwZgZ7dOHp_5bVXP72SFNOfdY32MKQsujFE7fezYdtqzR4KWlhUnDnvIOFQGK4Fvhq7ujQBb13QO4Qo__zBw/s1600-h/osamabinladen.jpg"></a></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieeusbKy40QNjJ35r1LNLrgAR7bAf3GSSYUtdiq3H20XQlsUZsZUZBAbXDwZgZ7dOHp_5bVXP72SFNOfdY32MKQsujFE7fezYdtqzR4KWlhUnDnvIOFQGK4Fvhq7ujQBb13QO4Qo__zBw/s1600-h/osamabinladen.jpg"></a></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMAycLGFbt2bofX5DXaPnRnEgcaJw-QaDEggEdCe876o5NR9gaol0udOCpfEAH0_PnEMldPQO3fGF9KWPnxhHyTjI0kFnxXQKxPWJj1rAU3-O94eniEPH7sucF6aXT5gK5aDRD7YUbPkg/s1600-h/iraq_girl.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5207119757248451682" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMAycLGFbt2bofX5DXaPnRnEgcaJw-QaDEggEdCe876o5NR9gaol0udOCpfEAH0_PnEMldPQO3fGF9KWPnxhHyTjI0kFnxXQKxPWJj1rAU3-O94eniEPH7sucF6aXT5gK5aDRD7YUbPkg/s200/iraq_girl.jpg" border="0" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5qLpIJH2RIC5Oy55wDJvT9MhHYlwo91D3G1bukulbP5ZpT5VVsWPaHJVIhwKLCuiXsGgp7NOM-be57P-kqh_GHP95q66dX3pNLPz4Wq6JUrgrKp6E94UrpmELdAwmjdB5fCLULvSIUOg/s1600-h/osamabinladen.jpg"></a></div>ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-8518854958590211672008-05-31T15:18:00.000-07:002008-12-10T10:16:21.468-08:00Intercultural Negotiations<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLYXpezcGlG7AaYRY40VCCE9rKeROR3Rjj84yYjm0Xr-zXP1g1YvHlT3kaUwgv0UEVKbwF6J8qEz_WR9DvNgXAEBq9IyF-FKyIzC5vENCWwSAJ-dDvmnH8yxX9lmn_uPmyV3W0Rp2gMs0/s1600-h/Al-Kamil_and_Frederick_II.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5206670118535073250" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLYXpezcGlG7AaYRY40VCCE9rKeROR3Rjj84yYjm0Xr-zXP1g1YvHlT3kaUwgv0UEVKbwF6J8qEz_WR9DvNgXAEBq9IyF-FKyIzC5vENCWwSAJ-dDvmnH8yxX9lmn_uPmyV3W0Rp2gMs0/s400/Al-Kamil_and_Frederick_II.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />(Frederick II & Al-Kamil, speaking the same language?)ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-19879908494210118642008-03-25T20:19:00.000-07:002008-05-31T15:23:13.265-07:00Media and Form<em>"There are of course specific characteristics of different media, and these characteristics are related to specific historical and cultural situations and intentions. Much of the initial appeal of McLuhan's work was his apparent attention to the specificity of media: the differences in quality between speech, print, radio, television and so on. But in his work, as in the whole formalist tradition, the media were never really seen as practices. All specific practice was subsumed by an arbitrarily assigned psychic function, and this had the effect of dissolving not only specific but general intentions. If specific media are essentially psychic adjustments, coming not from relations between ourselves but between a generalised human organism and its general physical environment, then of course intention, in any general or particular case, is irrelevant, and with intention goes content, whether apparent or real. All media operations are in effect desocialised; they are simply physical events in an abstracted sensorium, and are distinguishable only by their variable sense-ratios. But it is then interesting that from this wholly unhistorical and asocial base McLuhan projects certain images of society: 'retribalisation' by the 'electronic age'; the 'global village'. As descriptions of any observable social state or tendency, in the period in which electronic media have been dominant, these are so ludicrous as to raise a further question. The physical fact of instant transmission, as a technical possibility, has been uncritically raised to a social fact, without any pause to notice that virtually all such transmission is at once selected and controlled by existing social authorities. McLuhan, of course, would apparently do away with all such controls; the only controls he envisages are a kind of allocation and rationing of particular media for particular psychic effects, w hich he believes would dissolve or control any social problem that arises. But the technical abstractions, in their unnoticed projections into social models, have the effect of cancelling all attention to existing and developing (and already challenged) communications institutions. If the effect of the medium is the same, whoever controls or uses it, and whatever apparent content he may try to insert, then we can forget ordinary political and cultural argument and let the technology run itself. It is hardly surprising that this conclusion has been welcomed by the 'media-men' of the existing institutions. It gives the gloss of avant-garde theory to the crudest versions of their existing interests and practices, and assigns all their critics to pre-electronic irrelevance. Thus what began as pure formalism, and as speculation on human essence, ends as operative social theory and practice, in the heartland of the most dominant and aggressive communications institutions in the world."</em><br /><br />--Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form, pp. 127-128.<br /><br />(Cross-posted to <a href="http://elusivelucidity.blogspot.com/">Elusive Lucidity</a>, sans commentary.)<br /><br />A few discussion questions, or guidepost comments:<br /><br />1. We should be careful always to discern which arguments, and which types of arguments and reasoning, make the entrenched institutions (of society, of media, of government) happy and are deemed worth replicating or appropriating. There are discernible links between certain forms of academic writing, particular subfields & hot topics in scholarly and critical publishing, and ad copy. Some of yesterday's comp lit students are surely today's peddlers and 'media men.'<br /><br />2. What are the similarities & differences of pre-modern art patronage and contemporary cinema/media business production?<br /><br />3. We need, in politically committed media commentary, better attention to form! The aegis of formalism gets a conservative ring not because close attention to aesthetics and style are reactionary, but because the cordoning off of all political questions is. (And so formalism's historical and empirical functions are worth opposing, but this reactionary arrival is of course not a determined fate of <em>closeness and sensitivity to form</em>.) We don't always need form to unpack and explicate popular products for the masses--as though journalists and instructors have no more vital goal than to teach viewers how to "properly" appreciate <em>Buffy </em>or <em>Family Guy</em>. A political attention to beauty includes instruction on how beauty is mediated (and blocked) from us, how our standards are perverted, our individual reactions nurtured on a mass scale to receive blindly certain forms, to not think of forms as forms.ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-71899550030716802802007-08-26T10:18:00.000-07:002007-08-26T11:14:46.529-07:00Strutting with Purpose<p><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Wrxb6TnX8LA" width="425" height="350" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent"></embed></p><p>The film, <em>Rockers</em> (directed by Ted Bafaloukos, 1978) is lots of fun, but its central problem is wealth (re)distribution.</p>ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-49258750845314936532007-08-24T15:42:00.000-07:002007-08-26T10:18:31.552-07:00Quei loro incontri<embed style="width:400px; height:326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=5721618728897031890&hl=en" flashvars=""> </embed>ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-6736584772408084642007-08-24T15:39:00.000-07:002007-08-26T10:18:24.787-07:00Europa 2005 - 27 Octobre<embed id="VideoPlayback" style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 326px" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" hl="en" flashvars=""></embed><br /><br />"an unsigned cinetract ... the first of a series commissioned by Enrico Ghezzi for Fuori Orario (a legendary mavericks-and-visionaries-only Italian TV show) to celebrate Roberto Rossellini’s centenary. Asked to imagine a moment in the life or the death of Ingrid Bergman’s character in Europa ‘51 (1952), their reading of Rossellini yielded a video-ugly pamphlet—as subtle as a knee to the groin—mourning the death of two Parisian youngsters who, chased by the police, hid in a high-voltage electric transformer and burned to death. A little later, the banlieus were burning. The film is like nothing else in Huillet and Straub’s oeuvre since Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a Cinematic Scene (1972), their tract on Modernism and collaborationism, WWII and Vietnam, the Old World, the New World, and the Third World.<br /><br />"Only 12 minutes long, Europa 2005 - 27 Octobre is obviously an incidental work, but it’s nevertheless/therefore important, for it reminds us that Huillet and Straub are political artists who recurrently tackled very real, precise, and timely political subjects, something too many of their self-appointed acolytes couldn’t be bothered with. And even if Straub’s overly judgmental musings get on one’s nerves, they’re still preferable to the docile, “understanding” silences or demagogic ravings which make up the present style of political non-discussions: with Huillet and Straub one can at least fight. They possess unquiet hearts and minds, unreconciled, unconsoled, hopeful. They care."<br /><br />--<a href="http://www.cinema-scope.com/cs29/spot_moller_queiloro.html">Olaf Möller</a>ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-11673030861899246852007-08-13T18:15:00.000-07:002008-12-10T10:16:21.834-08:00Personal Politics<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM5DALVlIFXVrYxVKzJljccz_c6epGzMrhH8govMUNjQLQkbJArURbPvWgXmhL2nlammnApG0FkqSvRuPJELsK64WaRmiojlDbf0hxUc-Y09l4qtlXW62eJfnryzVnM0JSZ8_MkwAnJ5s/s1600-h/13rove6-600.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5098359685237455074" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM5DALVlIFXVrYxVKzJljccz_c6epGzMrhH8govMUNjQLQkbJArURbPvWgXmhL2nlammnApG0FkqSvRuPJELsK64WaRmiojlDbf0hxUc-Y09l4qtlXW62eJfnryzVnM0JSZ8_MkwAnJ5s/s320/13rove6-600.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">(Photo: </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/13/washington/13cnd-rove.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1187053456-eoU08kO8pXWjCWk2LOYq1Q"><span style="font-size:78%;">Doug Mills/The New York Times</span></a><span style="font-size:78%;">)<br /></span><br />My favorite book title ever is for Althusser's memoir, which I haven't read: <em>The Future Lasts Forever</em>. (So many chances to keep trying, at least...)<br /><br />I have not yet read any of the news pieces about Rove's departure from the White House staff--the headlines alone induce in me intense revulsion. Why celebrate his departure? Because a "bad guy" is gone? Because the Bush administration is a sinking ship? Please. The damage is done. The engines for further profit-making have been put firmly in place. No "electable" Democrats will be able to--or want to--change it either. My only hope for the Democratic candidates, one of whom will surely win the 2008 election, is that maybe they'll be able to help the American working class. A little. No more.<br /><br />Once I felt something secured within me. One of those very rare moments when you know you've changed a bit. I was reading a collection of texts related to the Paris Commune. The journals of the Goncourts gave very interesting descriptions of the Commune's former members, its then-victims, after the workers had been crushed by the military. The way the writer (which Goncourt was it? I don't recall but think it was Edmond) wrote with such humanistic sympathy for the downtrodden, ugly, defeated masses. All this energy put into the proper eulogistic tone for failed revolution, for utopia deferred, denied, and instantly I thought, as though I were talking to the author himself, "<em>You didn't help them</em>. You stood back while they were slaughtered, you and your kind, and all your sympathy came to naught because it wasn't solidarity."<br /><br />Nice fairweather progressive and liberals ... we stand by while the monstrous machine keeps going. And people wonder why Marxists disdain Democrats, why radical people of color distrust white liberals, why "clerks" in and around the academy (I include myself in this group) are ridiculed and largely powerless. It's because we're the ones who watch the resistance get murdered and then shed a tear for it.<br /><br />When I had an idea for what From the Clouds to the Resistance could be, it was to break out of this mold and to latch on to the struggle of those who knew better.</div>ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-29874357438903108022007-08-12T17:32:00.000-07:002008-12-10T10:16:21.993-08:00Groundwork<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFF6Y65mwAanmjC4ac0n1zdZSWFAAqkcnILQrQ63h98uDw_1YcvWJp2LBghUmG61XiP01D0OpOaaQk4kyEm-Mbjndk65ZG7v7OmZ1CaqIzAfppwFnbT2m84MrM085tvSUP188geo_4SGM/s1600-h/300.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5097978640033921234" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFF6Y65mwAanmjC4ac0n1zdZSWFAAqkcnILQrQ63h98uDw_1YcvWJp2LBghUmG61XiP01D0OpOaaQk4kyEm-Mbjndk65ZG7v7OmZ1CaqIzAfppwFnbT2m84MrM085tvSUP188geo_4SGM/s320/300.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />"Man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly." (Nietzsche)<br /><br />A few propositions to be worked out, challenged, refined here. 1a) That conservative and right-wing cinema exists as a structurally viable minoritarian "pole" in mainstream film & media so as to venture critique of capitalist modernity, that is, as the <em>only </em>critique of capitalist modernity in this arena: John Milius, Mel Gibson, elements of <em>300</em>. 1b) The corrolary here is that left-wing commercial cinema is gutted, reformulated to fit capitalism's ends, resistance packaged & revolution sold: <em>V for Vendetta</em>, <em>The Matrix</em>, etc. 1c) The function is the illusion of parity between "right-wing" and "left-wing" cinema when none really exists. A more exact understanding of this relationship is to be analyzed & articulated. 2) That in much neoliberal commercial cinema (as well as the "left-wing" product) there is a great deal of reversibility, so that film-texts are constructed so as to accomodate a "reading" and its opposite so as to sell conflicts for viewers to engage in (taking sides in the Culture Wars <em>as portrayed by the media</em>) in order to mask larger and true conflicts.<br /><br />(Sembène material still in the pipeline ...)ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-44861904875394281052007-07-17T05:51:00.000-07:002007-08-26T10:16:58.051-07:00The Soldier Video<p><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qFOF-jv32dA" width="425" height="350" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent"></embed></p><p>Is this video authentic? It has been making the rounds for a while and from my own initial, cursory look I can't find any authentification. To what extent would it matter? Yes, there are certain lines between truth & fiction, of course. But if this is staged, and especially if its anonymous YouTube posting do not indicate otherwise (but simply leave the matter ambiguous) would this not be a case of fiction "arriving at" truth? Former soldier <a href="http://stangoff.com/?p=522">Stan Goff</a> says this rings his "Reality Bells." If it rings true but <em>is </em>a recreation, what role or value does it have for the progressive movement? Or for those all over the world--inside America and out--who would see it? Has it been inspiring outrage outside of the radical or antiwar blogosphere? (Has it been inspiring that much outrage <em>inside </em>it?) At the forum <a href="http://forum.rapgodfathers.com/showthread.php?t=123875">Rap Godfathers</a> there's a link to the video followed by discussion that is hardly rosy about the role that troops play in US militarism ... </p>ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-9834741344752833942007-06-16T13:45:00.000-07:002007-06-16T14:04:23.888-07:00Sembène & MoneySome preliminary thoughts here on Ousmane Sembène as I gradually get into posting in earnest about his work--because From the Clouds needn't be all about finished products, but about collaborations, labor, criticisms, correction, new ideas. I have still only seen a few films by Sembène, and will see more over the next few weeks, but thus far the two major polarities seem to be sketching themselves out along the backdrop of Senegal's (and Africa's) place and identity in world history and geopolitics--the axes are feminism (or women) and money. The circulation of money from Europe & North America to Africa (and, of course, away from it) is the catalyst and backdrop for <em>Mandabi </em>and it is a kind of background motif in <em>Faat Kiné</em>, where characters make comments about Old and New Africa, "black" (i.e., not European, not "civilized") ways of conducting business, and education or vacations abroad (to France, to Canada). Sembène's cinema is also of course highly supportive of matriarchy--if not as an absolute, then as a materially necessary combatant to patriarchy and all its offensive defense mechanisms. Tradition is important to a lot of these characters, including very sympathetic ones, but they (and hence Sembène) make clear that not all tradition is to be kept blindly, such as the climactic moment with the long-absent fathers in <em>Faat Kiné</em>. Consider also, in <em>Mooladé</em>, that it is a tradition of female togetherness, of solidarity in their roles as daughters/wives/mothers, that allows the women to band together to overcome a tradition of FGM.ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-10357765542158519672007-06-11T19:42:00.000-07:002007-06-16T14:06:58.072-07:00Television Is Democracy?<em>"Freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of conscience are not a thorn in the side of government," Rice told the ministers. "Disagreeing with your government is not unpatriotic and most certainly should not be a crime in any country, especially a democracy."</em><br /><br />(<a href="http://www.chinapost.com.tw/international/111588.htm">via</a>)<br /><br />Television is democracy! The right for corporate airwaves to come into your home is a red-blooded, god-given right, eh?<br /><br /><em>"RCTV's 3,000 employees ''felt their lives were taken away from them,'' said Pérez Hansen, who has worked at RCTV for 15 of his 35 years. Azuaje, a 42-year-old cameraman, is a 23-year RCTV veteran. Rísquez, his 28-year-old assistant, has worked at RCTV for six years. The 31-year-old Ríos is a 10-year veteran.<br /><br />''When we say we are a family, it's not just some story,'' Ríos said.<br /><br />They said RCTV management has promised to continue to pay their salaries and generous benefits. But Ríos says RCTV employees are now being denied personal bank loans because of their uncertain future.<br /><br />Pérez Hansen admits that during the 2002 coup against Chávez there was an ''informative silence'' -- it did not cover pro-Chávez street marches demanding his return to power -- but the group insists that's only part of the story.<br /><br />Pérez Hansen and Ríos say they received calls from sources in the security services warning they would be attacked if they tried to cover the pro-Chávez marches. Ríos said she was so frightened she spent the night at a friend's house.<br /><br />And Pérez Hansen recalls tough editorial decisions. RCTV decided not to air reports of supermarkets being plundered for fear of inciting more violence, he said.<br /><br />For the moment, the group is enjoying the support of their peers. Ríos says major Latin American TV operations like Argentina's Telefe and Mexico's Televisa have inquired about buying some of their programming.<br /><br />But its members are aware that, like any news story, the issue could fade from public view, and RCTV's employees will have to face the hard economic reality of a station without a broadcast license."</em><br /><br />(<a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/416/story/129811.html">via</a>)<br /><br />As per usual, the corporate media presents a story of its own as dispossessed, disenfranchised--suggesting to its readers (Miami residents in this case) what if this left-wing disease were to ever attack your society!? You'd lose your comfortable middle-class job (or, at least, your right to expression--<em>seems you may keep your benefits</em>). RCTV played a participant role in a capitalist coup; as a state leader Chavez seems bound to neutralize a major media organ; would Condi Rice really defend similar actions affecting the Bush Administration? No--but of course this is the difference, as Fox News plays its own participant role in US politics and elections. This is not about freedom of speech; it is a matter of who owns the airwaves. The corporate media and the US government would of course have us believe that corporate ownership and control of the airwaves is "democratic," and that state ownership and control in a strong, successful left-wing state is essentially "totalitarian." Who's actually limiting speech here? Is Chavez using shock troops to violently disperse protests against him? Like police have done against "unwanted" elements in the USA, see video in post below.ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-24615465444597771732007-06-11T16:58:00.000-07:002007-06-11T19:48:55.348-07:00Ousmane Sembène<strong>1923-2007</strong><br /><br />It is with a heavy heart that we note the passing of Ousmane Sembène, the great Sengalese artist: a filmmaker, a writer, a progressive mind. His work was something genuine and special, and his passing is along the same lines of that of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea or Danièle Huillet: we have lost someone whose commitment to great and challenging artistry was rivaled only by a commitment to people and to progressive politics, who seriously bridged gaps between participation with people and aesthetic power and complexity (pioneering artists who were strong and fortunate enough to not be lapdogs of a studio, or art dealers, or any moneyed interests).<br /><br />From the Clouds will dedicate a short series of posts to Sembène very soon.ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-48939205850924445862007-06-05T20:17:00.000-07:002007-06-05T20:19:26.143-07:00RCTV"It would be easier, much easier, for the Portuguese empire to reinstall itself in Brazil than for the Venezuelan government to return the license to the Venezuelan oligarchy."<br /><br />--<a href="http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=2318">Hugo Chávez</a>ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-22536636168235566862007-05-22T16:32:00.000-07:002007-05-22T16:37:38.565-07:00Holding Pattern<span >Specters, specters--there is also a specter haunting this little corner of the Web. Comrades, friends: please bear with us as things come together over a little more time. There are, indeed, "buildings to be built."</span>ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-84875368091451864892007-05-02T19:46:00.000-07:002007-05-02T19:48:32.574-07:00LAPD and the Immigration Rally<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/IeO6D5tzag8" width="425" height="350" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent"></embed><br /><br />Hat tip to <a href="http://brownfemipower.com/?p=1369">Brownfemipower</a> for indicating this footage.ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-61444865303149367812007-04-21T06:40:00.000-07:002007-04-21T07:20:11.848-07:00The Blimp over Caracas<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070419/ts_nm/venezuela_zeppelin_dc_1">Venezuela launches Zeppelin to tackle rampant climb</a>.<br /><br />1.<br /><br /><em>Around the hot-dog stalls of the run-down suburb where the airship took its first flight, most people felt the unmanned eye-in-the-sky could help counter routine hold-ups, shootings and carjackings.</em><br /><br /><em>"It is a necessity," said street vendor Pedro Marin when asked about the 15-meter helium-filled blimp that had been looming silently over his stall beside a busy highway.</em><br /><br />2.<br /><br /><em>In the refined cafes of east Caracas, there was more cynicism, condemning the blimps as a waste of money that would not work in bad weather or at night, when Caracas is at its most risky, resembling a shuttered-up ghost town.</em><br /><br /><em>"It reminds me of 1984, of George Orwell. This is Big Brother. It is not going to solve crime," said Jose Luis, a lawyer who declined to give his family name.</em><br /><br />Is this not the story of the American media's handling of Venezuela and Hugo Chávez? Many people--workers, mainly (and often more codedly embodied as the distasteful brown tide of humanity)--support Chávez, but there's always an articulate opposition mentioned very prominently in stories like these, an opposition coded in the US media as being the sterling conscience, the cautious allies of freedom, whose misgivings about government policy are to mirror our own. We must believe them, see, because they are educated people (like a lawyer who alludes to Orwell) who refuse to give a surname because the leftist government might harm them for their exercise of speech.ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-76583755886014103972007-03-29T18:49:00.000-07:002007-04-21T06:40:03.942-07:00The Revolution Will Not Be Televised<embed id="VideoPlayback" style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 326px" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars="" hl="en"></embed>ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2098516956084026509.post-58969054789666403192007-03-29T18:11:00.001-07:002007-04-21T06:39:47.582-07:00The Way Around Turkey"On March 15 in Athens, the heads of state of Russia, Greece and Bulgaria signed an agreement of cooperation in the construction and exploitation of an oil pipeline from Burgas, Bulgaria to Alexandroupolis in Greece. Connecting the Bulgarian port on the Black Sea with the Greek port on the Aegean, it will provide for a transport route for Russian oil to the Mediterranean that would bypass Turkey and the Bosporus Straits, which Turkey controls."<br /><br />... continue <a href="http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/pipe-m29.shtml">here</a>.ZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com0