Rainer Maria Rilke’s ‘Inner Sky’
December 19th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Damion Searls discusses the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke with Christopher Lydon on Brown University’s Radio Open Source. Often bracketed with Yeats at the pinnacle of European poetry in the 20th Century, Rilke makes an even better pair with Walt Whitman as the irresistible great poet for everyone. In his essay ‘Looking for Rilke’ (in Stephen Mitchell’s Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke) Robert Hass relates:
When Rilke was dying in 1926 — of a rare and particularly agonizing blood disease — he received a letter from the young Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva. “You are not the poet I love most,” she wrote to him. “‘Most’ already implies comparison. You are poetry itself.”
From The Inner Sky, “poems, notes, dreams” that Damion Searls has selected and translated, we are reading Rilke fragments that can make one gasp on a first hearing. I like specially, for example, these “Notes on the Melody of Things,” which snuck up on me six weeks ago and induced just the sort of trance Robert Hass recounts.
Greenwald discusses Wikileaks on FAIR’s Counterspin
December 19th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
On this week’s Counterspin Glenn Greenwald of Salon discusses new developments in the Wikileaks saga.
(I think Al Jazeera is head and shoulders above competitors in the mainstream as a media institution. But I can’t say I am a fan of its media watch show The Listening Post. The show lacks political edge, and the media analysis is trite. One wishes they would follow the hard hitting style of FAIR‘s excellent Counterspin.)
This week on CounterSpin: The journalism organization WikiLeaks is under massive attack by U.S. government officials, corporations, and journalists. Many are calling for the group and its spokesperson Julian Assange to be prosecuted; some have even called for Assange’s execution or assassination. Transnational companies like Visa, MasterCard and Paypal have cut off services, and even liberal US pundits are attacking the group with inaccurate smears. WikiLeaks crime? Making leaked U.S. diplomatic cables available to the world both directly and through its mainstream media partners. In this special extended CounterSpin interview, we’ll talk to Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald about the assault on WikiLeaks and Assange, and what it means for journalism.
Bradley Manning: The man accused of leaking US secrets
December 19th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
He is the true heir to Daniel Ellsberg. And he is being treated inhumanely by the establishment whose inhumanities he helped expose.
Curiosities Abound in Assange Case
December 18th, 2010 § 1 Comment
Update: John Pilger writes in The Independent defending Assange against a defamatory piece published by the Guardian.
by Dennis Bernstein
An interview with John Pilger
John Pilger (Photo: AFP)
Dennis Bernstein (DB): Let me get your overview here of Julian Assange and what is happening to him. How do you see this?
John Pilger (JP): Well, it’s a very complicated and very suspicious case, of course. Today [Thursday] we saw a pinch of justice, that’s all. But his bail is weighted down with conditions. He’s virtually under a kind of house arrest. Now if he wasn’t Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, none of this would have happened. I doubt whether there would be any prosecution, we’d be having this conversation.
And we learned today [Thursday] that the Swedes had not initiated this appeal against bail that was heard today in the London court. It was the British. Why were they doing it? Were they doing it on behalf of the U.S.? I don’t know the answer to those questions. But suspicions really do mount in this case.
Mark Weisbrot on Haiti
December 18th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
This picture of a U.N. peacekeeper throwing tear gas in Haiti is featured on the U.N. website. (Photo: Reuters/Eduardo Munoz)
Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy and Research in Washington, D.C. and co-writer with Tariq Ali of the Oliver Stone documentary “South of the Border”, has published an illuminating piece in the Comment is Free section of the Guardian. Variously touching on U.S. foreign policy in general, the WikiLeaks cables on Haiti (apparently it is necessary for the U.S. State Department to know how many drinks the Haitian president can handle), and the ignominious role played by MINUSTAH — the U.N. force in Haiti — Weisbrot writes:
People who do not understand US foreign policy think that control over Haiti does not matter to Washington, because it is so poor and has no strategic minerals or resources. But that is not how Washington operates, as the WikiLeaks cables repeatedly illustrate. For the state department and its allies, it is all a ruthless chess game, and every pawn matters. Left governments will be removed or prevented from taking power where it is possible to do so; and the poorest countries – like Honduras last year – present the most opportune targets. A democratically elected government in Haiti, due to its history and the consciousness of the population, will inevitably be a left government – and one that will not line up with Washington’s foreign policy priorities for the region. Thus, democracy is not allowed.
Islamophobia goes mainstream
December 18th, 2010 § 2 Comments
It is too easy to mock the crude prejudices of the Tea Party. But in the US, Islamophobia has universal sanction, from Bill Maher to Bill O’Reilly. The following is therefore disturbing but not entirely surprising. Kudos to Anderson Cooper for bringing some sense to American mainstream television.
Thus were the State Department’s pretenses laid bare
December 17th, 2010 § 2 Comments
Matthew Lee of AP is a credit to his profession. For nearly a week he has been interrogating the State Department spokesman PJ Crowley abou the imprisonment of Abdullah Abu Rahmah, a non-violent activist who led the weekly protests at Bil’in. The silence and dithering of the government are telling given the high-minded claims Obama and Clinton made about supporting non-violent civil-society initiatives.
Update: Mondoweiss reports that Lee raised Abu Rahmah’s detention yet again at today’s press conference and the following exchange ensued:
« Read the rest of this entry »
Nir Rosen on the aftermath of America’s wars
December 17th, 2010 § 1 Comment
Nir Rosen, is a fellow at NYU’s Center on Law and Security, and one of the best war reporters in the world. Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World is his account of the impact of US wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. In this interview he speaks to Glenn Greenwald of Salon about his book.
And here is the transcript:
Glenn Greenwald: My guest today on Salon Radio is Nir Rosen who I think is unquestionably one of the best war journalists and commentators in the country probably in the world. He is a freelance writer photographer, film-maker, and he is currently a scholar associated with the New York University Center on Law and Security, and he has just written a book that I finished reading actually today entitled Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World. It’s really an amazing book. It describes the impact of multiple American wars on families and people in various countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and other countries where Nir has spent a great amount of time. I’m really excited to talk about this book. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me today.
Nir Rosen: Thanks for reading the book.
