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Sounds like Mike Gravel was the hero of last night's Democrat candidate debates (I didn't watch--just read the postmortems). Interesting to see the differences between antiwar.com's account, which quotes Gravel's plainspoken words skewering the other candidates, and the New York Times version, which hews to the line that he was the "comic relief" and marginalizes his contributions. Dave, in the comments, said he was a bit dotty but his words certainly aren't. Here's the antiwar.com version.
Gravel...got the issues of war and peace exactly right.
Some of these people [the other candidates] frighten me. When you have mainline candidates that turn around and say "there's nothing off the table with respect to Iran. That's code for using nukes, nuclear devices. I’ve got to tell you, if I'm President of the United States, there will be no preemptive wars with nuclear devices. In my mind, it's immoral, and it’s been immoral for the last 50 years as part of American foreign policy.
Moderator Brian Williams then asked Gravel who on this stage worries him so much. Gravel said the top tier candidates worried him.
Gravel first took aim at Joe Biden:
Joe, you have a certain arrogance, you want to tell the Iraqis how to run their country. We should just play "get out." It's their country, they're asking us to leave, and we insist on staying there, why not get out. You hear the statement, "the soldiers will have died in vain." The entire deaths of Vietnam died in vain. You know what's worse than a soldier dying in vain? More soldiers dying in vain.
Gravel slammed fellow Democrats' approach on continuing to fund the war:
Well, first off, understand that this war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis. Understand that. Now with respect to what’s going on in the Congress, I'm really embarrassed. So we passed – and the media's in a frenzy right today with what has been passed. What has been passed? George Bush communicated over a year ago that he would not get out of Iraq until he left office. Do we not believe him?
Gravel’s alternative:
How do you get out? You pass the law, not a resolution, a law making it a felony to stay there.
Make the illegal war actually illegal. That’s the ticket!
But the best moment came after Barack Obama said that Iran having nuclear weapons will be a major threat to the US: "They are in the process of obtaining nuclear weapons. I don’t think that is disputed by any expert." (At this point, Kucinich interrupted that it is disputed.) Barack continued: "They are the biggest state sponsor of terrorism, with Hezbollah and Hamas." Kucinich continued to interrupt. Obama then talked of the risk of nuclear weapons reaching the hands of terrorists.
Gravel (who happily was next in line) confronted Obama:
We’ve sanctioned them [Iran] for 26 years. We scared the bejesus out of them when the President said they’re "evil." These things don’t work. We need to recognize them.
artist unknown
"Labyrinth Remixed" [2.8 MB .mp3]
Shorter, digitally rearranged version of ex-Happy the Man keyboardist Kit Watkins' instrumental prog anthem "Labyrinth" (1981). Took what I consider the "essential riff" (four variations of the same tune, plus a bridge) and jettisoned all the classical dynamics, theatrics, and buildups as well as expressive soloing. Reordered the riffs and overlayed them to make new counterpoint, thus turning a progressive rock song into a techno-prog song--kind of sped-up Philip Glass, what I always wanted to hear when I played this. Some excellent "real time" keyboard and drumming being massaged here--but I am interested in the song's "money shot"--structures of the sublime in their most compact form.
A few posts back a "wandering POV of a wandering POV" was discussed--a shaky, panning YouTube video documenting Linda Post's shaky, panning video perambulation through a cornfield. Here's another variation (thx AFC): John Michael Boling's YouTube of a video panning along a block of strip malls. The standard YouTube screen framing the action scrolls slowly from right to left using the "marquee" browser command, making its position on your screen in constant "slow and go" tension with the position of the camera's viewfinder. The video's continuous "tracking shot" is roughly panoramic, whereas the YT starts over at your screen's right as soon as it reaches the left side, creating what feels at times like an impossible folded space.
In both scenarios (James Kalm's Linda Post video isn't a piece per se but an inevitable meta extension of the Post), recursiveness is the watchword, in form (a picture within a picture) and in content: Post's video references cornfield tracking shots (from North by Northwest to Children of the Corn) and Boling's obliquely channels Ed Ruscha's Every Building on the Sunset Strip.
If we had an Adorno he might say such dual recursiveness is a distinguishing feature of 21st Century art, or at the very least Web 2.0 art.
Related / 2 / 3
Another for the XYZ Art list:
"Paul Pfeiffer's Live from Neverland video installation is divided into two separate videos: one soundlessly replaying footage of a televised statement in which Michael Jackson addressed the child-molestation allegations, and a second one featuring a chorus of 80 voices reciting Jackson’s monologue in the manner of a Greek chorus. The two videos are brought into further correspondence by means of a subtle re-syncing of Jackson’s facial gestures to match the spoken delivery of the chorus, down to every pause, inflection and nuance." (opening at The Project in NY on May 3)
File that one under "choir":
Choir sings NASDAQ average
Choir recites Jackson molestation monologue (or maybe that's ABC art--Jackson 5 joke)
etc
See also New Kids on the Block.
And top 1000 amazon reviewer Newt Gingrich.
Robert Wright on the latest nonsense from the Bush adviser cadre:
Neoconservatives have been airing an explanation for the failure of the Iraq war that's so obvious you'll wonder why you didn't think of it yourself: the war wasn’t neoconservative enough.Read the whole post, it's very well argued. That Bolton interview is worth watching. The puffed up little Bantam rooster just deflates when asked tough questions by the incredulous BBC interviewer. (thx jim and dave).
Last week Richard Perle, on "The Charlie Rose Show," echoed what his fellow neocon John Bolton told the BBC last month: We should have turned Iraq over to the Iraqis much sooner. Then, presumably, the power of democracy to blossom pronto in even nutrient-depleted soil--the neocon elan vital--would have kicked in.
Nice try, but they're just digging themselves in deeper. They're highlighting a paradox within the neocon game plan that would have doomed this war even if it had been run competently (enough troops, a dollop of postwar planning, etc.).
On the one hand, we were going to bring democracy to Iraq. On the other hand, we were going to use Iraq as a platform for exercising military power. (Days after Baghdad fell, the neocon Weekly Standard festively titled an article "There's No Place Like Iraq ... for U.S. Military Bases.")