Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Anti-semitism is pretty old, too, and yet there was a lot of criticism that
countries didn't respond soon enough to the Holocaust.
  

    
The United States in the late thirties was one of them---there were
some in congress that didn't want to alienate the German-Americans or
the Germans to give them the "wrong idea"---i've been working on this
period---Herbert Feis was in a peculiar pickle being in the State
Department and being Jewish, and not being able to really influence
foreign policy in that regard---very ticklish situation---but I"ll have
to look at his correspondance to see how he dealt with that in his
private life---
  

    
Sharon--I know Clinton and Albright among others have been flogging
that analogy, but it's demagoguery I think  to compare Milosevic's
attacks on the Albanians (1500 killed, by the administration's account,
since the trouble in Kosovo started) with the extermination of the
Jews in a half dozen countries.  Not that any number killed anywhere in
the Balkans is justifiable for one moment to maintain M's control over
a centralized Yugoslavia, but at the present time--or up until the
bombing started--the Serbs were far from united behind Milosevic. 
We're uniting them, and mobilizing the Russians--along with any country
that faces separtist movements (China with Tibet)--who can now worry
that the US with its NATO armada and its brand new bombers lusting for
action, like the B-2 stealth, will intervene.  But it's this inflated
faith in the power of aerial bombing to bring ground forces to their
knees that scares me.  Air war is America at its worst, and the massive
firepower being aimed at these crowded cities cannot hope to leave
civilians unharmed. Look at the pictures of Pristini, the capital of
Kosovo, in today's papers.
The book I mentioned earlier btw is DARK CONTINENT: Europe in the 20th
Century, which I ordered at the local library today.  
  

    
the history of the area Balkan, Serb, Albanian, what have you is murky
to the max, has been so for more than a thousand years---The Ottoman
Empire, the HOly Roman Empire before that: there's religious strife:
catholics, greek orthodox vs. roman catholic; shiite vs sunni muslim;
it's nasty, its impenentrable; no one's going to "win" this one because
there is no good guys and no bad guys---there are some parts of the
world that have always been sinks of desolation and death and ethnic
violence---NATO isn't going to stop it, no one has been able to stop
it. And guess what, no one WANTS to stop it over there. What would they
do? who would they blame? sorry to be such a pessimist, I've studied
the area, you can read my more recent posts. The Treaty of Versailles
didn't settle squat, just postponed things----again.
  

    <scribbled by silly Mon 9 Jul 12 16:21>
  

    
I'm currently reading Mikal Gilmore's beautiful book "Night Beat: A Shadow
History of Rock and Roll."  A passage from his introduction ties in nicely
to some of what David says in TNB but with a slightly more optimistic view
of the ongoing (and future) power of pop music:

"Pop music hegemony is nothing new. The industry loves it, seeks it--that
is, until somebody shatters the security of that dominance: somebody like
Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Sex Pistols, Nirvana, N.W.A. Then, the
industry goes off in search of artists who can parlay all the new dissidence
and invention into yet another newer, hipper, profitable version of
dominance. It's maddening, but it's also fine--sometimes, in fact, it's
great fun. That's the way things work. Somebody makes a moment or career out
of sundering the known order and sound, and then the industry and culture
try to make that act of sundering into a model for mass commodity. I'm not
sure it's entirely bad--if only because it guarantees that, come tomorrow,
somebody else, somebody new and wonderful and daring and deadly, will have
something to disrupt and displace, to the pleasure and outrage of many.
        Besides, for all the inevitable corporate appropriation that goes on
in popular music, rock and roll and hip-hop still face much more serious
problems and enemies: All those folks like William Bennett, C. DeLores
Tucker, Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, and (I hate to admit it since I voted for
the fuckers twice) Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who still blame rock and roll
for social problems, and who still refuse to acknowledge their own hand in
lining the 'bridge to the twenty-first century' with some deadly potholes. I
am glad and I am glad it still seems like an opportunity and voice for
liberation and offense for others. I am also immensely thankful that I was
allowed to come of age in an historical moment--that is, to 'grow up'--when
rock and roll made some bold and upsetting advances, and I am thrilled with
the realization that I will 'grow old' with music that will continue to do
the same.
        That's why, today and tomorrow, I'll look to artists like Sleater-
Kinney, Trent Reznor, Royal Trux, Marilyn Manson, Tricky, Master P, Bikini
Kill, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, P.J. Harvey, Mary Lou Lord, Elliott Smith, and
Lucinda Williams for the kind of courage, insight, and beautiful violation
that have made rock and roll such a great adventure and such a great
disturbance in our culture, our arts, and our values. Without these artists,
and others like them, the future won't count for as much as the past--and
all tomorrow's nighttimes of sin might not be as illuminating."

I highly recommend this book.

David, can you relate at all to Gilmore's optimism about the current and
future power of rock and roll?
  

    
This reads like ad copy to me.  Rock and roll "a great adventure...a
great disturbance in our culture, our arts, and our values"??? Just
what the Man wanted when he promised (back in '69) not to ever ever
bust our Music.
  

    
The "Man" was Columbia REcords.
  

    
Yes, "the Man" was Columbia Records AND the shareholders who supported
it, AND the audience for whom the ad was pitched. It was a very clever
piece of adhype of generational selling that was done---

If one ks going to be totally pc about this: any rock and roll that
you can get on a cd is "part of the problem"----and that's absurd. The
problem is that once an artist wants to make money, all bets are foo
(well I mean off). Manfuacturing, distribution, distribution rake-offs,
and how's an artist supposed to make any money unless he sells his
stuff out of the back of his van (and that's done), but when one wants
to buy into the myth of rock and roll and the rock and roll star,
that's where the real confusion starts---want to make rock and roll
free once more (as if it ever was) then the monster which is MTV and
the merchandizing machinery which runs it must be destroyed, and I
don't see that happening anytime soon because MTV picked up on the
esential mechanism that made "The Man can't bust Our music" so powerful
and expanded on it with technology---

I'm glad I dont' have to write about rock and roll, don't have to
write about music anymore, don't have to have an opinion. If I like it
enough, I'll find the cd or see the show, if I don't, I'll just switch
the station. Pretty soon you won't be able to do that with MTV, think
about it, h0w pervasive that style of advertsiing is, how seductive.
Don't you want to put your foot right through the tv set? smack those
smarmy vj's around a bit? Kids rule? my ass. Becaue of MTV and things
vaguely like that, childhood is no longer a safe haven, rather it's
just another market which can be exploited by yhounger and younger ad
execs---

I dunno, Barry, my bran's gotten really toasted with the events in
Middle Europe and somehow talking about "culture" seems just a little
too precious. It's not to say that I can't get it up to talk about it,
but the enormity of the situation there overshadows lots of other
"lighter" things we could be talking about. Maybe I 've always thought
of rock and roll as folk art and when it gets too      
professionalized, when there are too many stacks of Marshall amps, topo
many quick/subliminals in the video (when a video is what 'sells" a
song and not the song's intrinsic content (or lack of same as with the
Morones), I tend to tune out). I don't know where it's going to go,
these days I"m not even sure where it came from anymore---too many
apologists and academics interposing theory or deconstructing same. And
it's funny, now I understand the simple pleasures of three chord rock
and roll---for a while.
I tihink rock and roll is at another one of those stages like I
remember in the late Fifties---too much smae old same old---too much
mandated innovation--- ask me that quesiton another way around, Barry,
and I'll see what I can do with it.
  

    
as for your comment, silly <205>. I can't imagine what will happen. My
problem is that I don't think that when this dystopia you envisin
happens there will be anyone around who will notice
  

    <scribbled by silly Mon 9 Jul 12 16:21>
  

    
silly, I did his show back in January and that's how I wound up here.
  

    
The book on Kosovo is Noel Malcol,m, "A short history" -- though it's
about 400 pages in paperback.

I can't say how disgusted I am with this idea that wars can be fought
without risking the lives of ground troops. I think we should be in there
on the ground; and with a volunteer army there is no possible excuse for
not risking their lives. Dying is what soldiers are for, after all. At
least, if they're not prepared to die, they're no use at all.
  

    
I agree that wars can't be fought without losing lives of ground
troops; that's why we're fighting an air war. Of course you have to
have troops in the field, the problem is that where they are going is
worse than Vietnam, so maybe this is Europe's vietnam? NO one can win
this one. The real issue here is why do Western nations think they can
hope to understand the depth of hartred that is thick on the fields in
Kosovo and Yugoslavia? There ethnic hatreds have no rhyme nor reason,
you have to be born with the DNA to get even a small inkling of what it
feels like. The West either will ahve to get out all the way and let
the blood flow, or go on the ground and then really have the blood
flow. Either way, no one wins and veryone loses. There was a very fine
article in sunday's NY Tiomes by Chris Hedges in the News in Review
Section which summed up the whole mess. It's obvious that the people in
the state department don't read too much history and have forgotten
what happened during the Treaty of Versailles---the diplomats back in
1919 only put things off, there and in the Middle East. So much for
diplomacy. Here we go again, hold on to your hats, guys and gals!!!
  

    
Well, I spent my childhood in Belgrade. These people don't seem so very
different to me. Most or much of human history has involved this kind of
thing. Obviously it looks different form the US; but it seems to me a
European problem. We have to decide where the frontiers of Serbia are, and
then enforce that decision. 
  

    
It was a European problem during the peace conference in 1919 and
nothing at all was done at that time---in fact, what was done was
absolutely nothing at all, boundaries were redrawn, another war ensued,
and so on and so forth. Unfortunately it's true that "much ormost of
human history has involved this kind of thing"---doesn't  make it any
righter you know. Easy enough to have it be a European problem, doesn't
mean the Euros (the people not the currency) will be any more
enlightened out it. The truth is that NO ONE knows where the boundaries
of Serbia are supposed to be, that's what has been fought about for
over 800 years (give or take). You think there's some power which
doesn't have vested interests in finding a solution? Maybe the
Russians? (kidding of course). This situation has no solution save to
put a wall round the country give them both equal arms and let them
thrash it out--- that's cynical but yu'll see, that's what will happen
anyway.
  

    
Give them "both"?  Even that won't work because now of course they're
three. Albania wants its Greater Albania just as the Serbs want theirs,
so the wall would have to embrace not only Macedonia, Montenegro, and
Bosinia, but also Albania.  What will happen I'm afraid is that the
soldiers of Europe and NOrth America will all soon be butting heads
inside this wall, which will stretch and expand to accomodate these
vast armies until "borders" become irrelevant.    
  

    
A solution that has worked is finding a new Tito, who
unites the different ethnic groups around the fear
for the bigger devil : Russia.

Probably too late for that now. The moment Slovenia left the
federation, ecouraged by some European countries, the finger
was pulled out of the dyke.
  

    
"...and it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for,
don't ask me 'cause I don't give a damn,
next stop is Vietnam (pick your country)"---

Tito was an anomoly---I could be VERY cynical and say that man is
damned. I think Russia has just lost it, and is playing bait and switch
with its own people to keep them from thinking about domestic
problems---
  

    
Re Erik--Slovenia's withdrawal from Yugoslavia WAS encouraged by 
Western Europe, and was the first hole in the dike, while Croatia and
Bosnia's separation was also encouraged by the United States if not
engineered by it. Looking at the direction Kosovo seems to be going--as
portrayed in the US media, a victim of Serb misrule--it looks like
that will be its direction too, until finally there  may be no
Yugoslavia left at all, but only a swarm of dismembered ethnic groups,
feuding among themselves.  In the end the whole region may be ruled as
a new type of colony by....not Russia but a strange successor: the
so-called International Community with NATO as enforcer.  

I just discovered a Kosovo topic on the Media Conference that's been
going only since 3/25 but has over 250 posts.  Links within links,
including one--via EFF--from Kosovo itself.    
  

    
Carol---your description of Yugoslavia sounds more or less like what
it was when it was run by the Austro-Hungarian empire, BEFORE WWI. And
so it will return. NO winners, everyone loses, ther are no sides like I
said---everyone is an aggrieved party, and neither NATO nor the
Russians (who canbarely deal with their own internal affairs) are gong
to solve this. Last year at this time the Kosovo Liberation Army was a
collecton of thugs, now they are beleagured freedom fighters (you've
got to remember the news stories that were coming out of that area).

I keep thinking that all the millenialists are stocking their
basements with food, and all the Y2K nuts are donig the same. It just
shows to go you that mankind has an increasing capacity for mayhem, but
that there never has been a moment in its history when there hasn't
been a war somewhere---this is the human condition, peace and love
notwithstanding.
  

    
Maybe so, but this particular war is getting under my skin. I can't
bear to look at tv news accounts, which reveal the propaganda machine
at its most primitive.  Like cartoons, with that fat-assed president
saying lines that even Reagan or Bush at his worse would never
mouth...like 'Milosovic is a smart man, never underestimate your enemy,
etc. etc., but he has a mean soul, or a hard heart.'  As if this is a
melodrama, and he's crafting the bad guy who stands like some instant
pudding Eichmann atop this apparatus of genocide which is itself highly
suspect if you read European reporters like Diana Johnstone. 
Did you notice the new US line floated today?  to foresee Kosovo as a
"protectorate" to be managed by the "international community"?  I
coldn't believe it.  So how will this "Austro-Hungarian Empire" look
managed from Washington, and policed by NATO?
  

    
yep---it didn't work in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it's not goig to
work at a NATO protectorate. It probably *Will* work as an etyhnic free
fire zone. I can sympathize with your pique and your dismay, and I'm
dismayed myself, but there is a problem with no solution, or a solution
which wont' be greated with universal applause. As i said, in this
one, there are no good guys and there are no bad guys, the Serbs and
Albanians have been having at eachother for many hundreds of years,
maybe even thousand all tolled. Does it make it any better? No. Is
there anything we in the West can do? Unfortunately no because we
aren't in their skin and aren't likely to get there.
  

    
Actualy, the Serbs and Albanians have not been having at each other
for centuries. A great deal of that stuff was made up in the nineteenth
century by rpomantic nationalists. For an awful lot of history the
Serbs were abou as important and as coherent a nation as Belorussia,
say. 
  

    
Now THAT makes perfect firking sense, Andrew---I guess we'd have ti
get around to talking about romantic nationalism after a while; in fact
nationalism seems to be the culprit here. I remember being an
undergrad in the late Sixties and thinking what a great think
nationalism was, then reading about how that manifested itself in the
Balkans and what a mess it made. And of course throughout all of this,
there is Kurdish Nationalism, which makes belorussian natinalism
appears to be a thing a quiet sense, beauty and nationalism. But I see
you get my drift on this.

And now that we are drifiting, where is the sanity? but then again,
THAT wouldn't help in this case. There is none is what I've been
saying, there are no white hats, only gray hats---killers are killers,
ethnic killers are no different than regular killers, they have no more
sense of right or wrong---what a fucking world, eh?

watch as the world stumbles into another war in the Balkans when
everyone's gong tog et involved. Doesn't is warm the cockles of your
heart?