The "Criterion Collection"/Mark J. Lovas

(an additional note added 2 September appears at the bottom of the page)

The other day I happened to notice some references to Milan Kundera's book "the Unbearable Lightness of Being" and the movie with the same name. The texts/web pages made it sound like the book and the movie were connected, but the author, Kundera, disavows that connection....

In an author's note to the Czech Edition of the Book-- (I think he wrote it in Czech first, but these days I think he writes in French)--he says that the move has very little to do with the spirit of the book or the spirit of the characters.

And, he goes on to say that after the experience he no longer allows his works to be adapted.

(The experience of this movie, I take it)

Now I added that information to a review at something called "the Criterion Collection", where they
sell the movie...

But if you Google my full name, you get a little bit of text where I seem to praise the movie.

I would like to change that, but don't know how. Hence this note....

Incidentally, it's hard to believe that this bit of deception is a mere coincidence. (It's not that I"m a famous movie reviewer, but still, it is misleading. And I don't like my name being associated with an aesthetic judgment that I would reject.)

For what it's worth, here's what I wrote (cut and pasted from the site)....

The author, Milan Kundera, has said that this movie has very little to do with the book—either the spirit of the characters or the spirit (see Note immediately following) of the book itself. Indeed, after this film he no longer allows any adaptations of his work.

note immediately following; I now think "spirit" is too weak as a translation; better to say "heart" or "soul". I apologize if I've misled anyone by my poor translation.

How come that doesn't come up in google?

Let's try this: I am going to add

Mark J. Lovas Criterion Collection

Maybe this entry will come up now....

REFERENCE

Milan Kundera, nesnesitelná lehkost bytí, Poznámka Autora, Paris 2006; no place of publication is indicated, but the publisher is Atlantis.

Note added 2 September:

Note, too that on the page which asserts Kundera's copyright 1984, there occurs a sentence which I will now translate: All adaptation whatsoever, whether it be in film, theater or television is forbidden.

One is inclined to draw the conclusion that Kundera was not only unhappy with the film "based upon" his book, but that he disliked the film so much, that he would no longer trust anyone to attempt any sort of translation into any other medium of any of his works. Of course, the story of his disappointment with linguistic translations is (or should be) well-known.

What happened last week?

The following describes an event which happened on Thursday, 26 August 2010...

"... this was a first offense..."

--spoken by representative of Verizon. (I prefer to say 'VERY-ZONE" or VERY ZO-ON because veritas in the ancient sense where it goes along with justice and beauty is not the name of the game here...if there's any veritas here it is construed very narrowly and legalistically....)

I purchased a mobile phone for my mother from Verry-Zone. We did not want to have monthly payments. And, in the past, whenever I owned a phone with a pre-paid card (something I have done four or five times in Slovakia and Austria, and even in these very United States) any balance remaining at the end of the month remained valid.

With Very-Zone, greed seems to rule. The pre-paid phones have the following annoying feature: If you do not use your phone for the entire two months, and carry a balance, you must still add more money--pay more money to the company--in order to continue using your phone. Correction: I am talking about a situation where we didn't use the phone, so we can't continue using it! I'm talking about the possibility in the future that we might want to use it... and we've got to pay for that--pay additionally!

Thus, it would be possible to pay ten dollars every sixty days in order to keep the phone activated... even if you've made no phone calls (except to purchase more time from the company)....

Oh, is it sixty days or thirty days? I've forgotten. But it doesn't matter! The point is that you have to pay even if you don't use your phone.

And in the meantime, the company has your money.

Today my mother's phone has zero balance because she neglected to add more money to the Very-Zone account. They've already got forty dollars of her money, so it's not unsurprising if my mother failed to take account of their greedy policy.

Do you say to me: LET THE BUYER BEWARE! Indeed, that's why we are supposed to have something called "consumer protection"... not that that would be a real solution given the status quo! what a joke.

But, no, I do not accept the suggestion that this is "My fault". Indeed, somewhere in the pages of small print included with the new phone there was (I suppose) an explanation of this policy. But when you give someone tons of useless information, it gets tiring to read it all, doesn't it?

And, you wonder, don't you, whether that isn't a deliberate policy too.....Something like "confusion marketing"....

Now when I did call Very-Zone, the very polite and intelligent lady whose conversation with me was recorded, did help me out since, as she put it this was "a first offense."

But, let's focus on the language here.

By not paying them money for a service I hadn't used but might use in the future, when they already had my (mother's) money, I had (in their eyes) commited a crime, an "offense".... the offense of not performing my civic duty as a red-blooded American, the offense of contributing to the growing gap between the richest and the poorest!

But I say they are committing an offense every month when they demand money.

Moreover, I've lost (or my mother has lost) the freedom to choose how much she uses her phone.

I think you've grasped my point.

Land of the Free? Ha Ha Ha. Make me laugh. Land of Private Tyrannies.

FOOTNOTE ABOUT PRIVATE TYRANNIES AND THE END OF NET NEUTRALITY:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-silver/google-verizon-deal-the-e_b_671617.html

The Grouch Reads

L. Wacquant's Punishing the Poor; The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity

From a paragraph describing what politicians do to prove they are tough on crime...

"During his 1992 nomination campaign, Bill Clinton made a point of interrupting his electoral tour in the northeast to rush back to Arkansas and attend inperson the putting to death of Ricky Ray Rector, a deeply mentally impaired convict--his last wish was to have his dessert set aside so that he could eat it after his execution--whom Clinton had refused to save from the gallows as governor."
p. 174, Chapter Five, "The Coming of Carceral 'Big Government.'"

The Grouch Reads

Graham Greene:

"It was impossible to conceive either of them as prey to untidy passion: they did not belong to rumpled sheets and the sweat of sex. Did they take deodorants to bed with them?"

"They were only war casualties," he said. "It was a pity, but you can't always hit your target. Anyway they died in the right cause..... In a way you could say they died for democracy." he said.

(The Quiet American, 1955)

noted in passing

seal it in an air-tight container, a plastic bag, freeze it, no freeze-dry it, etc. etc.

No NO NO NO

that's bullshit

The way to have fresh food is to have fresh food--not preserved food.

This is an insane country, an insane culture....

Things are Getting Worse

I haven't been blogging much for the past couple of days, but I have a backlog of things to post. And there are things I have posted that should be edited and revised.....

A SAD OBSERVATION

From 1996 until last year I spent most of my time outside of the United States.
At some point in 1997 I had sold a good number of books. These days, I often find myself hunting for a book, unable to find it, and wondering whether I was fool enough to have actually sold it. The next step in this sad process is that I go to the web and contemplate the prospect of purchasing a book I know I used to own...

What I notice time after time is that a book I purchased, say, for less than 15 dollars in 1994 or 1995 or earlier now costs 30 or more dollars. And an inward struggle ensues. Maybe the book is there somewhere in a box behind the other boxes, and I simply can't get to it now.... The thought that I am going to buy the very same book I used to own and pay twice as much for it as I originally did is too painful to contemplate.

My actual income has declined, and so has the income of most citizens of the USA.

This means that our access to the most basic goods of culture has deteriorated.

If you think everything you might want or need to read is available "for free" on the internet then you are just not very curious.

The Grouch Reads

a little Aristotle:

... no one chooses to possess the whole world if he has first to become someone else....

(Book IX, Chapter Four, Nicomachean Ethics, transl: Ross and Urmson revised by Barnes)

Why I love the USA

Why I love the USA: How to defend an illegal and ruthless imperialist occupation.
pro-war propaganda in the grocery store...
The cover of "Time" magazine, August 9, 2010....

"What happens if we leave Afghanistan"

"we???!" I'm not there! And the children of the rich are not there either!
And I don't support militarism. You are not doing it in my name.
Support our troops. Bring them home.

http://www.time.com/time/covers/0.11641,20100809,00.html

This link was supposed to take you to the August 9, 2010 issue cover, a picture of a woman
whose face had been disfigured, the the title "What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan"

http://www.time.com/time/covers/0.16641.20100809.00html

And for something more truthful, try the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan:

"If you are freedom-loving and anti-fundamentalist, youare with RAWA."
htto://www.rawa.org/index.php

A Walgreens-Hanes-Honduras Connection?

Recently I was in the local drug store, "Walgreens", and I noticed t-shirts for sale.
I was curious to see where they came from. Some had been made in Honduras.
Last year the democratically elected President of the Honduras was overthrown in a military coup.
Today there are reports of human rights violations.
The United States never protested strongly and there was a phony election.
But, here's the funny thing: Before he was removed, the democratically elected President was talking about raising the minimum wage.
I wonder, if possibly, people who work in the factories which make those t-shirts might possibly be paid the minimum wage? If they got more money, would that cut into the profits of either Hanes or Walgreens?
Is that possible?
Might Walgreens and or Hanes be happy that the democratically elected President was removed?

After-thought (2 February 2012)

Of course, it would be wrong to suggest that the Hanes company actually overthrew a government, and I have not done so. That is not necessary, although, the history of the United Fruit Company seems to show that companies are capable of overthrowing governments.

All that is necessary is that, as a capitalist company, Hanes wants to pay the lowest wages possible. That is something like a law of capitalism. Companies try to keep costs down in order to increase profits. So, insofar as the overthrow of the democratically elected president meant lower costs--or avoiding higher costs----the owners/stockholders of Hanes must be happy.

Whether companies---or stockholders, or the others--actually have a moral right to those profits is altogether a different question.

However, the logic of capitalism is such that any firm is happy to avoid paying higher wages.

Myself, I don't think that's a good thing. But I'm not arguing the point right now. However, if the owners or stockholders at Hanes were uncomfortable with the thought that their profits were purchased at the price of human suffering, that would be a good thing. They should be uncomfortable, and they should think about whether what they are doing is right. They should think about it.

If capitalism is not necessary, not a law of nature, then the suffering of poorly paid workers who make things for USA companies is unnecessary. In fact, if something like "social democracy" is better than neo-liberal capitalism, then workers should be better paid, within a capitalistic system with a human face. (I am inclined to think that the possibility of social democracy is small, and that it is a system with a built-in tendency to collapse or degrade into inhuman capitalism, but it would be better than what we currently have.)

I do believe that capitalism is not the best system, not the only possible system.

Alternatives to the existing system, alternatives to capitalism? Read Michael Albert's "Parecon" http://zcommunications.org/topics/parecon

or David Schweickardt's "After Capitalism",

or Eric Olin Wright's "Envisioning Real Utopias".

http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/ERU.htm

An argument for social democracy can be found in Richard W. Miller, "Globalizing Justice".

The Dysfunctional Rich

What would it be like if your father was the head of the CIA?
Wouldn't growing up in that atmosphere mean that you failed to learn certain basic things? Wouldn't you grow up thinking that it was normal to remove democratically elected governments?
I don't know. It's just a thought.... I had when I heard about a certain wealthy man who wants to be governor of New York and who believes that he can teach poor people how to live... Odd. That strikes me as very USA... like the time in Slovakia I spoke to a US citizen who said that, at the very least, US citizens abroad could teach the rest of the world about .... hygiene? no... SORRY,---That was a joke!..... He said that US citizens could teach the world about democracy (that's sort of a joke too.....)......

Today the grouch (aka yankee gringo) offers a few words of wisdom from the sociologist Wacquant...

How does a society in which every other lone mother and one child in four (over 13 million youngsters, including 10 million without any social or medical coverage) lived below the official "poverty line" in 1995 manage to convince itself that the penury that afflicts so many of its most defenseless members is a consequence of their individual failings? The answer to this query is found in the moral individualism that undergirds the national ethos and the tenacious ideology of gender and the family that makes poor unwed mothers (and fatherless children) into abnormal, truncated, suspect beings who threaten the moral order and whom the state must therefore place under harsh tutelage.

(p. 81, Punishing the Poor; The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity; Duke UP 2009, original French edition 2004)

There is a psychology here: the self-described good person fears the social outsider, and works hard to create a mental barrier. And the society engages in symbolic acts of cleaning and casting out.....

Funny thing, that sounds like my recent experience at KMart..... (KMorality?)

File this under "The Grouch Reads...."

Hating El Paso Texas

Oh why? Oh why do you hate El Paso, Texas so much?
Is it that bad?
Is it really worse than Eastern Europe?

Yes, I do hate El Paso, Texas. It is worse that Bratislava. (Apologies to any Bratislavcan/ka who
happens to be reading this.)

Today, after arriving home, first I heard an hour of "thump-thump-thump" from a neighbor's "music".
Now I hear one of the local dogs barking. Usually it's some tiny mut who barks so long that he or she barks him or herself hoarse.....

In all honesty, I've been trapped in this hell hole for a year now, and in the last year I've spent more hours being forced to hear yapping dogs than in my entire life. Not to mention the unpleasant sounds and thumps coming from the local climate-destroying self-piloted metal, plastic, and steel boxes on wheels....

It would appear that the residents of El Paso do not think about their neighbors at all....

A Little Dose of Reality...

Politicians do not work for the people--not for the middle class, not for the "average American", not for you or me....

http://www.zcommunications.org/whacking-the-middle-class-by-dean-baker

A Trip to K Mart

Sunday 22 August 2010

First an APOLOGY to readers: I am afraid I’ve made a few posts that need to be revised. I hope to get around to filling things in and smoothing things out within the next couple of days.

In the meantime, now I’d like to write about an experience I had yesterday:

Yesterday, Saturday, I made the walk across the busy street which seems to always be filled with trucks, along the street of dogs barking, past the high school, past the post office, across the dead parking lot to Kmart, where I purchased ink for my printer.

Waiting in line to pay, I found myself having a conversation with a red-faced young man in a tank top.

He began by complaining about the service. He’d been waiting in line too long, and he told me how four or five employees were standing around while exactly one was operating the cash register.

I guess this was something that had just happened because so far as I recall two or three cash registers were then in operation, and I didn’t see anyone standing around except for customers.

Initially, there was a third person party to the conversation standing to my right at the customer service counter, but he seemed to exit from the conversation. Maybe he’d simply left. I don’t know because my attention was drawn to the speaker.

At some point I heard him complaining about two hundred dollars paid to a hospital or doctor for his father. He explained that his father had only one leg, the other having been amputated. His father was an invalid and it was his responsibility to take care of him.

The conversation or monologue continued and I learned that:

He had two children, but they had been

Taken away from him. The reason was unclear, as he was speaking he turned his head or maybe I was momentarily distracted.

He told me that his wife was a ‘crack addict” and that she had stolen 3000 US dollars from him.

At some point I explained that I too was unemployed. He suggested I might work at McDonald’s. Curiously he went on to tell me how he had been fired form McDonalds.

He had given food to a homeless man, and this was captured on a video camera. But, then he began to act out the story, using the historical present, quoting the manager of boss, and I found him hard to follow. I think he said that the manager threw the homeless man out of the store, but it may have been that the manager was telling the red-faced man that he was fired.

In any case, the guy was fired because he gave food to a homeless person. He was accused of “stealing”. I asked whether McDonald’s did not routinely throw food away. The man said “yes”. But, what, then, was the sense of that?

Wouldn’t it be bad publicity for McDonald’s if he told his story to the newspaper?

Well, that was five years ago, and I was young and didn’t know anything.

I recalled that there is a line from St. Aquinas (I think) –one cited by the philosopher Peter Singer—according to which if a rich man has bread, more bread than he needs, that extra bread is not his own. It belongs to the poor.

And, I agree with that. Whether it was said by a Saint or a sinner, it makes sense.

At some point my new acquaintance remarked that he felt like robbing a bank.

This was disturbing. I tried somehow to find words to discourage him.

And later, he mentioned his two daughters, saying how much he loved them.

So, somehow, I would have like to give him comfort. But all I could do was remind him that his father depended on him.

Think of your daughters. Think of your father and how much he needs you.

Those were, I think, my final words.

The man purchased two tins of something alcoholic. I assume it was alcoholic because the black and white attired young man behind the counter insisted upon identification.

I wanted to say: That’s awful. That is an insult. Being asked to prove you are “old enough” to drink! -- But in the United States people don’t even notice it.

The joke is that it’s only one of many aspects of a system of control, a system which robs us of our dignity.

From what the red-faced man said I drew the conclusion that he does not have health insurance. A great part of his suffering comes from paying medical bills. Wholly unnecessary. It would not happen in a civilized country.

When the troubled young man left, the guy behind the counter commented on how he obviously needed someone to talk to. I said “there but for the grace of God go I’… and I might have added: you too.

But the employee of K Mart plainly didn’t like the tenor of what I said.

I even said something like: no one deserves to suffer like that.

And, responding to a doubt I thought I heard or felt, I added, “And if someone does, that’s not for you or me to judge—but only God.”

Now, I’m actually an atheist, but I have no hesitance to express myself in that way. We don’t have the right to condemn another human being to misery. The notion that people deserve suffering is attractive when we want revenge, but that’s not a sufficient reason.

Again, the guy behind the counter disagreed, “well earthly justice is all we’ve got”

That was more or less his thought.

The justice of men is all we’ve got.

But the justice of men, I might have said, is precisely not justice.

Smug bastard behind the counter. Do you really believe that? Or is it the fact that you are behind the counter that makes you think that way?

Are you posing for the sake of a boss or an imaginary authority figure?

When I first lived in Slovakia I was often embarrassed when I had difficulty understanding what was said to me in a shop. Or, sometimes I was embarrassed by my inability to find the words or my bad grammar.

Gradually my hearing got better. Gradually my pronunciation and vocabulary improved. I don’t think my grammar every really improved so much, but I had essentially memorized a sufficient number of stock phrases. And, finally I could have a sort of conversation and even learn something or get a hint of a different perspective on life if a salesperson had time to talk.

But I don’t think I will ever get used to what I see and hear in the United States, the country of my birth. The injustice, the misery, the emotional confusion are too overpowering, too disturbing.

I understand too much, feel too much, and, finally, I too am powerless. And, I think I will never be comfortable here.

The reaction of the KMart employee was even more disturbing than anything the first man had said. It was pure indifference and denial--a denial of our common humanity. That bothers me more than anything the first man said. this attempt to create a distance between the more and less fortunate--no matter how small the real difference between them. That sort of brain-washed reflex reaction is common in this country. Not: there but for the grace of god go I/ But: They are bad and I am good.

One of the first times I heard and saw this was at the University of Toledo among "Honors" students who disapproved of female sexuality.....who disapproved when they read of a medieval Japanese woman who enjoyed sex with someone other than her employer....."employer"? Not exactly. She was a concubine owned by an ex-emperor. My Toledo students were offended that she spoke of enjoying sex with someone else. One even said she was a "slut".

This lack of sympathy, poverty of imagination, can, I think be encouraged or developed or the reverse--depending upon social structures, institutions, and depending upon economic institutions as well.....So the more I see the ugliness, the more I reason backwards and draw conclusions about the structure of US society...

and the less I like it...

And i saw it /heard it my very first week in El Paso, Texas when a soldier said that anyone who drove drunk was bad and deserved punishment.....

I know what it is. I've seen it before. I don't like it. It is truly ugly.

On the "C"-Word

The author/blogger reserves the right to modify this post...

Notes on the “C”-word;

let us begin with a quote from the poet, Ferlinghetti:

Which leads me to the unavoidable conclusion that the poet must perforce be an "enemy of the state." I hasten to add, lest the FBI knock on my door in the morning, that I mean an enemy of the state of our civilization today. Our omnivorous industrial civilization has proved to be bad for earth and man, ecologically and medically speaking. --Lawrence Ferlinghetti in "The Exquisite Corpse"

http://www.corpse.org/archives/issue_4/critical_urgencies/ferling.htm

North American folk ethics—a collection of principles and norms half conscious in the mind of the ordinary person, but governing behavior despite their below the surface status—is a combination the self-denying worship of the mythical activity called “work” and an irrational faith that reward comes to individual effort, together with a blindness to the degree to which any successful action by an individual requires a broad social network.

That’s a recipe for cultural disaster and needless suffering.

The mythical quality of this secular ideology (phrase borrowed from Epstein--note and explanation to be added) is apparent when so august a publication as “The Chronicle of Higher Education” dares to have a sub-section of “Careers” titled the Adjunct track—as if part-time and temporary work were normal.

((See, e.g., ths article http://chronicle.com/article/Love-of-Teaching-Draws/48845

But also read the comments on it.))

Of course, this is a feature of neo-liberalism which has been sharply delineated by the sociologist Loīc Wacquant. (in Punishing the Poor and elsewhere) We are supposed to accept this diminishing of possibilities as a fact and by talking about “careers” as a part-time or temporary College Professor The Chronicle of Higher Education is conforming to the overall strategy.

So, the use of the word “career” has become a weapon of class struggle. Those who own and control use it to confuse those who must work.

That’s roughly the background to my recent complaint about the “c”-word.

(Comment on “Creative Writing and Psychology, by Elaine Hatfield; (Monday August 16, 2010) posted by “formerly a wage slave”; both at the wonderful blog/magazine of psychology and writing run by Keith Oatley. )

(Link below)

Indeed, now that I’ve re-read the original essay—by Elaine Hatfield—I have some doubt in my mind whether Ms. Hatfield herself is not implicitly (even if unintentionally) reinforcing the mythology which I set out in the beginning of this comment. But, allow me to make my own point and then return to that worry.

Writing is not a career like banking. Writing is not a career like other careers. Neither is being a mathematician a matter of choosing a career the way most occupations are. An occupation provides a living. Most jobs mean a loss of independence and inevitable diminution of one’s mental powers. (See here, e.g., James R. Flynn’s What Is Intelligence? )[[further explanation and clarification/qualification to be added) Flynn defends the abstract point that a job can make you really stupider, but I do not recall that he said what I am now saying: that most jobs do so. Comment: this point needs to be made more carefully. Flynn discusses "IQ". Certain jobs may lead to declines in IQ. IQ is not obviously the same as "being smart"; decline in IQ is not exactly the same as becoming "stupid". The basic point will go through, but it needs to be made more carefully. Hence, the blogger/author will need to revise this entry)

Not for nothing did the phrase come into being: professional deformation of character.

That’s why I object to speaking of a career as a writer.... it suggests resonances that are misleading.

Ironically, the author whose words brought out this reaction was in the process of recommending that one choose a career of “intrinsic” value. Indeed, writing has intrinsic value and most careers do not.

But, there is as well a deeper point. Insofar as our societies discourage thought--most jobs certainly do—and insofar as writing requires creative thought, to normalize writing as just another career, another way of earning one’s living is a distortion. And it is also something of a mis-representation to suggest that a valiant lone writer must pursue their career in the face of rejection, and simultaneously ignore the question: how many real geniuses just gave up? How many great works would we have that have been lost if our societies and economies actually encouraged creativity?

Now the original essay which provoked my comment wanted to divorce writing from money-earning/survival issues. It’s not about popularity or getting rich. Indeed, but the richnesses which come from literature are very much under-appreciated and not encouraged by our current systems of social and economic organization. To speak of writing as a “career” is, by implication (even if it was not intended) to ignore that fact.

And let’s be clear: I have the highest respect for the bus drivers of Sun Metro in El Paso Texas. But their supervisors and managers do not gain my respect. The bus drivers make a genuine contribution the well-being of other citizens of this city. Whoever runs the bus system (those person or persons) have made many serious mistakes which contribute to a culture of suspicion and disrespect, and press down upon those with the least power. Both the managers and the bus drivers have careers—but neither have the access to cultural treasures available to someone who writes.

Might not a bus-driver write in his or her spare time? It could happen, but I suspect it is unusual—not because they lack material, but there’s a problem with time. One needs “a room of one’s own”, a space of one’s own, some freedom from the demands that others make upon us. How Jane Austen managed to write at the kitchen table—if the story is true—is a mystery to me!

Haunted by Memories

Haunted by memories of civilization

A little more than a year ago, my life had comforts which simply do not exist in El Paso Texas. Indeed, they probably don’t exist in this bellicose, cruel country of three letters.

I could, of a Saturday morning, walk around the corner to a park where children played and pensioners sat on benches feeding pigeons. A short walk—five minutes at most. And further on was a long street with shops. At the end of it my bank and a small collection of shops. A collection too gentle to be called a ‘mall”. And I could buy shoes or greeting cards or stamps at the post office. And there was a bakery there as well—a bakery, the sort of institution that sells fresh bread, once again something that does not exist in El Paso, Texas. (Well, yes, you can buy tortillas. But not the sort of bread I have in mind, fresh bread with a crust--and when the make the tortillas, do they use lard? Lard is a common ingredient in local restaurant cooking and has serious health consequences.)

Not only are there no comparable shops in El Paso, Texas. Whatever stores there may happen to be are far away, not within an easy walk. And I stress, such grocery stores as there are sell inferior goods. The fruit and vegetables are not fresh, and the shelves are full of various forms of artificial and manipulated food products. (And what of the phenomenon of genetic modification? In the land of the free we are unprotected from that threat.)

When I lived in Vienna, walking down the street from my apartment, again an easy five minute walk, I could catch a streetcar. And streetcars in Wien are not like the ugly buses in El Paso. They are not high up off the ground. No need for a ridiculous and time-consuming ritual accompanied by obnoxious beeping sounds: beep-beep-beep, the bus awkwardly tilts to one side, the driver gets out and helps someone enter the bus, beep-beep-beep, an obnoxious loud tone to increase the unpleasantness of waiting outside under the hot sun. A ritual which slows down the already slow travel of the loud unruly buses (unruly because the buses jerk like cattle cars whenever a driver slows down, knocking things off the seats if anyone is foolish enough to rest something there in a careless manner). The streetcars in Vienna are low to the ground; that it is not necessary to climb up into them. It is not necessary for them to be tilted with a noisy procedure. Apparently Rube Goldberg is more popular in El Paso Texas than in Vienna, Austria.

And the street car itself is almost silent. Again completely unlike El Paso’s noisy dirty buses.

And once I am in the street car I can easily go anyplace in Vienna. I won’t have to wait in the blazing sun or rain or wind unprotected because if there is a stop, at least in the most central part of the city, there will be a shelter. And there are not long waits. In El Paso they seem to have decided to take advantage of the long waiting times by building terrible buildings with miserable food and a television. Of course, I escape to such buildings when the sun is hot, but inside them it is desolate, a wilderness. Why would I want to watch television? Why would I want to eat junk food? The point is not to view the internet while I wait for the next bus! That doesn’t make public transport good. Good public transport means short waiting times. The managers and supervisors and politicians responsible for El Paso’s lousy bus system seem to have have things completely backwards. They should not be proud that they have provided such buildings. That's no reason to be proud. They should be embarrassed because they have not provided swift, efficient forms of transport---but only noisy, ungainly, polluting monsters. And if the politicians spend money to create even more highways, the shame piles higher.

(We should note in passing that the El Paso managers have decided, for whatever reason, to push the idea of "clean" (sic) natural gas. An omnipresent slogan. Is natural gas clean? Many water supplies in the United States have been damaged by the way in which companies get the gas out of the ground. Who supplies El Paso with natural gas? How do they get it out of the ground? Is it really "clean"????)

Whenever I walk anywhere in El Paso Texas, the walk itself is ugly . I walk down a barren flat space of concrete with shiny reflections from metal objects, many of which move by quickly and threateningly. The noise is that of someone else’s music played at a volume aggressive and indifferent to the wishes of any involuntary audience. I am in constant competition with enormous vehicles. It is not a relaxing or pleasurable experience to walk on the sidewalk in El Paso, Texas.

The vehicles themselves make noises in addition to the pilot's arrogant imperialistic invasion of my ears, in an impotent attempt to display his feathers.

In Wien other people would be doing what I am doing, walking to a tram stop, or simply taking a walk, or on their way to a grocery store.

Last night as I walked past the local high school, a collection of macho men had their large trucks parked there, and they were standing or leaning against their vehicles doing nothing. Maybe since the weather was a bit cooler, they were simply enjoying the ability to sit outside without roasting under the painful burning sun.

In any case, they were obeying the local commandment: no vehicle, no person. A typical case of the local rule: without a self-piloted vehicle of glass and steel and plastic, a person is naked, without rights, and without dignity.

They were not in their vehicles, but the vehicles were nearby, prominently displayed. And they were lounging about, as if they saw themselves as part of an eye-catching advertisement: healthy virile young man with his fancy car.

I remember one day in the spring last year in Vienna, when three women walked by with children, covered from head to toe, but in spring colors. Like three flowers: violet, pink, and yellow. My more racist and narrow-minded acquaintances often made disparaging remarks about the low quality of my neighborhood—too many foreigners, from Yugoslavia, Poland, Slovakia, Bosnia, or Croatia, or even Iraq. But it suited me well. My nearest neighbor was Italian and I often heard Slovak and Polish in my building. There was a vitality that El Paso lacks.

In part that is because when I ride the bus the people on it seem to have been beaten down by their work. And I believe that many of them are being exploited on a daily basis. That part of El Paso’s economy is unforgivably ugly. But it is, apparently, something we do not speak about. An ugly fact, a wart at the center of an ugly face that wants to be a beauty.

Oh yes, I heard nasty remarks from Austrians about recent immigrants. But, consider what I have already said. What was available in my neighborhood was a richness that simply does not exist in El Paso Texas.

A quality of life unimagined by the residents of El Paso Texas—unless perhaps a dentist or doctor should happen to visit the city, and enjoy it as part of an “exotic” vacation…..But the dentist or doctor does not ever stop to ask: why could we not have that sort of quality of life here? Perhaps because in this competitive wilderness the dentist or doctor is content to say: I have more money than most. But does the dentist or doctor stop to ask whether he is missing something in this capitalist dog-eat-dog jungle? Probably not! Neither the word nor the concept of solidarity are to be found in this miserable hell. There is no room for justice when the shelves are stuffed with boxes of sickly sweet chemically modified products derived from grains that were once actually beneficial to human beings. A more thorough hell, an assault on human dignity and culture more brutal can be imagined, but to do so would require imagining an act of overt brutality or violence. What we have here is a silent kind of violence, a thoroughly dishonest form of violence.

Oh Why? Oh Why?

Oh, Why Oh Why Dost Thou Hate El Paso so?

Start with food: bad food.
No fresh bread.
Oh, I know you buy so-called "artisan" bread, but excuse me that's bullshit.
That is an overused and abused word in this country where food is not fresh.
Yes, bread baked yesterday, and then frozen, then microwaved before it was put on the shelves. --That's what I was told by one of the person who works at the store where it's sold....

Fruit and vegetables not fresh

tastier tomatoes and onions are available in Slovakia, sometimes called an "eastern" european country....

What else? Isn't that enough?

And then there is the public transport. Non-existent after 8pm. Bad---slow and upleasant when it does exist. better again in Bratislava, capital of Slovakia. And we shouldn't even begin to compare it to Vienna.

People? They have a decidedly narrow outlook.

Irresponsible climate criminality.

Militarism? Yes, it is taken for granted, not questioned. And wars are mythologized. People don't know or don't care that in the so-called good war (World War Two) the Allies deliberately targeted the civilian population. It wasn't a question of missing the target. They were deliberately aiming to kill as many civilians as possible. (You didn't know that? See Grayling's book Among the Dead Cities
There's a review in the Guardian here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/mar/04/highereducation.news

And here's a link to Grayling's homepage, which includes a link to a video where he is discussing the book:

http://acgrayling.com/articles

And little has changed today....This country is number one in killing. Nothing to be proud of.

Attitudes about work? We don't complain. We cope. In other words, denial about the fundamental injustice of the society....

Nobel Prize

WIKILEAKS should receive a PEACE PRIZE--maybe not the ignoble since it is so patently not about peace.....

John Pilger writes about Wikileak's founder:

I like Julian Assange’s dust-dry wit. When I asked him if it was more difficult to publish secret information in Britain, he replied, “When we look at Official Secrets Act labelled documents we see that they state it is offence to retain the information and an offence to destroy the information. So the only possible outcome we have is to publish the information.

http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=584

"I'd love to hear from you!"

"How are we doing?" said the little counter sign in the local coffee shop run by a large corporation...
"Comments? Questions? Praise?"

"I'd love to hear from you!"

And below it, the manager's business card, with the bold bright company logo.

Well, actually what I'd like to say is: What the hell kind of country is this where people throw away other people's socks? I once left a pair of socks--brand new socks--in the bathroom. Let's not go into details, but I had been trying them on... and rushing off to catch a slow and inefficient El Paso bus I forgot them...And they were new. Either someone took them or someone threw them away.

So, what kind of country is this? Either stealing or throwing away someone's socks!

That indicates a fundamental lack of disrespect!

Get me out of here!!!

I'd just love to hear from you! (Really?) Debra Satz does comment about the work of Arlie Hochschild as follows:

....Arlie Hochschild has found that the sale of "emotional labor" by airline stewardesses and insurance salesmen distorts their normal responses to pain and frustration.

(Debra Satz, Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale, p. 226, n. 27; referring to Hochschild, The Managed Heart.)

Is such emotional contortionism really necessary to survive in the "land of the free"?

get me out of here

Oh yeah, and now that I think about it: There are the little medals pinned onto the caps of the people serving assorted beverages. Medals! Like the military! Sorry, that is just a waste of resources. Did someone say that capitalism by its very nature is wasteful?

And is somebody on twenty-four hour call to hear that the milk wasn't really low fat or some other inane complaint?

Isn't there something more important to do with twentieth century technology than create a space for me to complain that my skinny laté isn't skinny enough?

Talk about encouraging pettiness and egocentric desires! Can our outlook possibly become narrower? Talking about crowding the public space with egocentric desires! But the desires are limited, aimed at simulacrums of happiness, not the real thing.
(Do you really want me to say "simulacra"? Ha Ha Ha!)

Get me out of here!

The Grouch Reads

Today, a brief excerpt from Loïc Wacquant's book, Punishing the Poor:

....Durkheim taught us that punishment is a communicative device , a "language" delivering messages not so much to offenders as to the witnessing public--in this case the working citizenry. For the latter, the punitive makeover of social policy [through the so-called 'Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act'] signifies without equivocation that nobody can opt out of wage labor without exposing themselves to a material and symbolic degradation worse than the most demeaning job. And it reminds all that you must count on no one but yourself in the "war of all against all" that is life in a society subordinated to the market.

---Bracketed material supplied by blogger;quotation taken from Chapter Three, "Welfare Reform as Poor Discipline and Statecraft", p. 108.

Plainly, as this remark occurs at the end of the chapter, its power depends in large measure on the extent to which Wacquant has demonstrated in the pages that preceded that so-called "workfare" is a form of punishment, and an expression of contempt toward human beings who are poor.

a quick complaint

I just want to briefly comment (for the zillionth time)
that the City of El Paso Texas is nothing more than an exercise in arrogance and stupidity, hubris on an enormous scale.

Why in the world would a sane person take shrubbery and plants from a region with high rainfall and move it to a desert? Yes, with climate change even nasty El Paso has more rain, but the very idea is insane.

Yesterday, coming home on the bus, I noticed a house with its stone garden, three large trucks, and two mean attack dogs protecting it all....

this is not civilization, but the opposite.

PLEASE PLEASE GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!! asap

The Grouch Reads

THE GROUCH READS:

Debra Satz, Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale (Oxford UP)


http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Philosophy/Political/?view=usa&ci=9780195311594

Reading this book should help me understand why I have been pissed off for about twenty years--pissed off with the indignities one suffers when one looks for a job.

There are two principles we can borrow from the author:

1. No one should have to beg.

2. No one should push people around.

My employers have been pushy and I've often been reduced to the status of a beggar.

That's fucked up.

The author writes in an elegant, generally understated, academic prose style and the work is a controlled exercise. My blog lacks the restraint of her book, for which I make no apologies.

This is more a draft than a finished piece of writing. I hope to revise it.

now re-posting a very slightly revised version; original was posted a couple of days ago...

THE BRUTALITY OF THE U.S. SMILE-ON-DEMAND CULTURE

In his book “Punishing the Poor; The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity”, Loic Wacquant remarks that the Clinton reform of “welfare” included no provision to create jobs. The fundamental logic was either flawed or hypocritical. IT eliminated government help for the poor, but simultaneously while promising to change their (imaginary) refusal to cooperate with a broader society by working, it provided nothing concrete by way of job creation. instead, it provided a sort of system of psychological training, what the author of this blog would regard as propaganda. [imaginary? Well, Waquant points out that the people in question had to work because the money the government provided was woefully inadequate, and most people don't like to get money from the government, and get off welfare as soon as they can.--So there are a whole series of false assumptions behind the legislation.]

(And I must digress to say: I have seen this demeaning and degrading system at work in US institutions of education abroad….where adults who were allegedly professionals were forced to engage in public displays of submissiveness and exhibits of the right emotional attitude…. .nothing like an honest interchange between thought full adults…..)

Here is Wacquant on so-called reform:
No budget for job training and creation figured in it. State governments were given pecuniary incentives to devise plans to meet preset quotas of caseload reduction and work participation, but such plans would center entirely on the “personal reformation” of dispossessed single mothers through “readiness workshops” designed to teach them mainstream cultural norms and work submissiveness, as if poverty and joblessness were caused by “fear of failing, dependency, bad attitude, a sense of entitlement, the victim mentality, and low self esteem”. [Here Wacquant quotes Chad Broughton, “Reforming Poor women” Qualitative Sociology, 26, No. 1, March 2003)

--Loic Wacquant, Punishing the Poor, Duke University Press: Durham and London, 2009 (Original French edition 2004)



You might call that an emphasis on style over substance, but that would underestimate the sheer insanity and degrading character of what is described there. Insane because the mechanisms created do not suffice to achieve the stated goals. Degrading because the human targets of the so-called “reforms” were not only not helped by them, but insulted, treated with disrespect. Indeed, what is described is a sort of noxious attempt at mind control that, in the experience of the writer at this blog, is not unusual in the United States of America.


Recently I had a pleasant enough correspondence with a guy from the UK. He mentioned in passing that while Czechs were really nice, you could forget about “service” in restaurants or cafes.

Hmmm.

Yesterday I was in Starbucks, here in the desert, and I was brutalized by one of the women working there.

No she did not make physical contact with me. That would have been more personal than what she actually did.

What she actually did was demand from me that I perform a sort of ritual, and she rewarded me when I finally played the game.

((what ritual? You know how it goes: How are you? And there's only one
acceptable answer: "fine"... and so on....))

Usually I hesitate or say something "negative". Really I'd rather not play this
game, but for whatever reason, I just followed the rules and said "very good" or some equally throw-away collection of words. And this elicited a smile from her. Ahh the stupid man is finally learning how to behave correctly. ((Yeah. right. maybe if I continue to behave I too will, someday, be allowed to sell Skinnie Mocca bullshit drinks.))

As if I needed help in learning how to get along with
People.

This I find distasteful and demeaning. But, simultaneously I am frustrated because I know that this young woman does not know what she is doing. She is exhibiting her mastery of an insane demeaning and insincere ritual. I don’t care if the famous philosopher Thomas Nagel thinks it is harmless and would fault me for lack of understanding. I think he has failed to grasp the fundamental moral principle that every action has consequences, and if a people begin to trivialize something of importance, that too has consequences.

For relationships between human beings are simply too important to be banalized and degraded in this oh so USA way.

What we have here is a demand from above: nothing is allowed to interfere with the needs of business. It is not something to be celebrated or excused. The philosopher, Debra Satz, mentions a kind of celebratory attitude –as I’ve not finished her book, I can’t say if she endorses it. (I suspect not.) (This needs to be filled in.)

Keith Stanovich, someone for whom I have great respect, seems to blindly go along with the idea that we have to smile and suppress our actual emotions to get along.

More precisely, Stanovich says that people who work in the service industry have to suppress the automatic desire to think of it as a relationship with another person—and instead view it as a commercial transaction.

If you think about it, that’s frightening.

The only person I can think of right now who seems more inclined toward my view is Dacher Keltner, who in an interview somewhere on the web, once observed that we had these marvelous abilities for dealing with people face-to-face, and he worried that the internet might mean that they atrophy.

And what of me? Have I absorbed something of “Eastern” Europe?

Maybe, maybe not. Surely I can’t make such a claim about myself because none of us have privileged self-knowledge. I think I learned something from people in Slovakia, and other people I’ve met in other places. Am I just blindly going along with a different pattern? I think not. I think this phony friendliness is really very harmful to the quality of our relationships with other human beings. It's not just a "preference". It is my considered judgment.

NEW LINK

I've added a link to the Public Transport System in Bratislava, capital of Slovakia.
This is not the best system in Europe. There used to be a page at the site where it was mentioned that visitors from other parts of Europe found the system to be sub-standard as compared to the public transport they were used to. But it is much, much better than what is available in El Paso, Texas--or, probably most cities in the USA.

Note especially the existence of "night buses". How many Americans perish every year because social activities involve alcohol, and they (try to) drive home after they've had a few drinks?--I'm pretty sure I've read that most accidents involve someone who has been drinking.... Those are unnecessary deaths.

Social Control at the Pharmacist

Yesterday evening I walked to the local Walgreens to pick up some medicine for my mother.
This particular medicine was supposed to be free. My mother had gone through the chore of phoning up the company--"Pfizer" as it so happens--to arrange or register or whatever for the free week's supply. Apparently, this was no simple matter. At many points, my mother told me, she had to say "no" to questions which would have cost her money if she had answered "yes".
Now, let's stop right there.
Things are better in SLOVAKIA. I lived in Slovakia for more than ten years, and while I rarely used the medical services there, I did purchase medicines when I was sick. And I never had to go through such an annoying procedure as that phone call my mother made. And medicines in Slovakia are much cheaper than they are here....This bullshit is just not necessary. I don't know why people put up with it.
So, even when a company like Pfizer gives you a "free" sample, they make you work for it, and make it easy for it to cost you. That is an outrageous level of greed and disrespect.

When I got to the pharmacy counter, I was confronted by a television screen with a picture of me. And there was a sign claiming that at Walgreens I was safe and got cheap meds.
bullshit
Don't tell me that I am on camera to make my life safer. I am on camera to be sure that whoever really profits from Walgreen's operations has the MAXIMUM AMOUNT OF PROFIT.
Am I really supposed to feel safe because I am on camera when I am getting a medicine for my mother. And are they going to erase the film????
It seems to me that what we have here is a violation of my right to privacy.

[I have written elsewhere, I believe, about the unpleasantness I encountered when I dared to enter KMart with my backpack--because I don't own a car, and because I have to carry the things I buy....but that experience clearly illustrated the fact that the presumption of innocence had be revoked in that particular location...]

That's what happens when you have "for profit" medicine, for profit drug companies.
Actually, the whole business is even more insulting.
Every transaction at the drug store involves a little ritual: What is the address of the person who's getting the prescription? OR, the question: What is their birthdate?
WHY SO MUCH SUSPICION?
what are they afraid of?
This seems to be social control, at a very mundane level.
I did comment on this obnoxious system to the person behind the counter.
Nonetheless, I was faced with another question prior to getting the med's.
Have you got any ID?
Well, the medicine wasn't for me, but my mother; and I certainly don't have her ID.
But understand well, I am a citizen of the United States. I was born here. And I don't expect to be asked to prove my identity when I am at home. I accept it as a fact if I live outside of my home country, but at home??????
As it turns out, I don't have a driver's license. (I read somewhere that people are dying every year form global warming; and I don't want that on my conscience.)
by special dispensation from the local manager, I was allowed to get my mother's medicine by showing them my cash card.....
This is an example of social control. NO, people in the USA are not free. But no one seems to notice.
I will stop before I say something even more indiscrete.

By the way: What was it like in SLOVAKIA when I needed medicine? DId I have to tell them my birthdate or address? No, nothing like that. I had a plastic card that indicated I was registered in the health care system. I only had to produce it. NO suspicion. Hmmmm, I wonder why? Why are things better in EASTERN EUROPE? (Maybe it's better in CUBA too?)

Recommended:
On Al Jazeera English, "People and Power", "Drug Money":
8/10/2010
http://english.aljazeera.net/

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2010/08/2010811104338837849.html

An After-Thought
Suppose we were to take seriously Walgreen's claim that in-store monitoring with cameras improves safety. Then, we would have to ask for evidence: Is there any evidence that stores with cameras have less violent crime? I suppose that "safety" does not merely mean "less theft". My safety as a customer is damaged when I am faced with the threat of bodily injury.
I am not safer if Walgreens catches a shoplifter.

And there are precedents here. The City of London installed an extremely expensive camera system a few years ago. Last year there was a story (I've forgotten where I read it) about the fact that this expensive camera system had not made a big difference in criminal behavior. The City's solution: have more people monitor the cameras. (In other words: less privacy and less freedom for the wider public.) In other words, the initial expensive expenditure wasn't enough; they were going to spend more money to continue a failed policy.

Of course, the real issue is: what gives Walgreens the right to do what they do? I am inclined to accept the following answer: capitalist firms are "private tyrannies". In other words, morally speaking they have no right whatsoever to do what they do; but politically speaking, they do it because they can--because they have the power. And by borrowing Chomsky's phrase I do not think I am exaggerating one bit.

In the case of Walgreens, the case would be this: have they ever presented any evidence whatsoever for their claim that cameras increase customer safety? If they have never even attempted to make a case for that claim, then my diagnosis is supported.