“Abadan and Suez are important to the local peoples only in terms of their amour propre… To us, some of these things are important in a much more serious sense, and for reasons that today are sounder and better and more defensible than they ever were in history. To retain these facilities and positions we can use today only one thing: military strength, backed by the resolution and courage to use it.”
I loved this film despite hating its underlying premise.
As the title suggests, and the opening credits make explicit, Wild Tales is based on the notion that we’re a heartbeat away from “regressing” to our animal nature. As expected, this nature is characterized by: violence, vengeance, irrationality, lust, the reflexive defense of kin and tribe, greed, and gluttony.
This sort of speciesism – which itself underlies a great deal of racism, sexism, and political repression - we can and should avoid, particularly in works that aspire to political satire or social criticism. Director Damián Szifrón has discussed the film’s theme:
Despite the clear common theme of violence and vengeance, what connects the accounts, according to the director, is ‘the fuzzy boundary that separates civilization from barbarism, the vertigo of losing your temper, and the undeniable pleasure of losing control’. This is explored through the concept that human beings have animalistic features. Szifron considers the main difference between human and animals is the capacity one has to restrain oneself as opposed to animals who are guided by their instincts. Humans ‘have a fight or flee mechanism, but it comes with a very high cost. Most of us live with the frustration of having to repress oneself, but some people explode. This is a movie about those who explode’. It deals with ‘daily life’ aspects and ‘is a movie about the desire for freedom, and how this lack of freedom, and the rage and anguish it produces, can cause us to run off the rails’. The main issue, according to Szifron, ‘is the pleasure of reacting, the pleasure of reacting toward injustice’. (my emphasis)
The Freudian distinction between a repressed “civilization” and a “barbarous” freedom, in addition to isolating the human characters with their alleged instincts and drives, presents an obstacle to working out a real approach to political freedom and social justice. As I said, I loved the film, but it could have been a much stronger work of art, a stinging and biting social satire, had it questioned and challenged received wisdom about “civilization” and “barbarism,” “human” and “animal,” rather than reproducing it.
…Literature? Yes. Hammock literature. Literature made of sugar and vanilla. Tourist literature. The Blue Travel Guide and General Confederation of Labor. Poetry, not in the least.
…And this:
Oh father of my father, you were standing there before
my soul which had not been born and, under the wind
the dispatch boats glided into the colonial night
Come on now, real poetry lies elsewhere. Far from rhymes, laments, sea breezes, parrots. Stiff and stout bamboos changing direction, we decree the death of sappy, sentimental, folkloric literature. And to hell with hibiscus, frangipani, and bougainvillea.
Martinican poetry will be cannibal or it will not be.
Tremendous documentary, now on the Discovery Channel. (One aspect I emphatically do not recommend are the subtitles. Why anyone would place small white subtitles with no box behind them over a snowy, icy landscape is beyond me.)
“‘Although this animal is huge I was not that surprised it existed’, Mr Lightsey said. ‘We have come across lots over the last 20 years that have been only a little smaller. But what really drew our attention to this animal was the fact that it seems to have been feasting on the cattle on my farm, because mutilated body parts were found in the water. It was a monster which needed to be removed’.” [Source]
“‘A big alligator nonetheless, but they are not going to have an official measurement because it's not going to beat the record’, Tony Young, spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said in a phone interview.” [Source]
And here’s an alligator at the Merritt Island Wildlife “Refuge,”* presumably thinking, “No, I’m not a rock, you idiot leaning over the water and extending your appendages. Go get your glasses.”
* I don’t think any of us would consider a place where people can suddenly hunt us for sport to be a refuge.
“[T]he goal of a karesansui garden is to suggest magnificent scenes from nature by forming the shapes of various landscape elements such as waterfalls, mountains, islands and ocean … thus the garden expresses the vastness of nature in miniature, within a strictly limited space.”
- Kinsaku Nakane, designer, Tenshin-en, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
“If the US was serious about fighting IS, it would not only have been providing full support – both in deed and in word – to the YPG and YPJ and its sister organization, the PKK, but it would also confront Turkey on the mountains of evidence that they have in fact been supporting IS. It would demand that the borders with the Kurdish regions in Syria would be opened, and that the bombing campaign against PKK positions as well as the terror campaign against Kurdish civilians be seized [sic] immediately. Most importantly, it would take the PKK of[f] the terror list.
Unfortunately, the US’ actions have shown that it is interested in no such thing.
Rather than defeating IS, its objective is the preservation and expansion of its influence in the region. For this, Turkey is a much more valuable partner than either the YPG and YPJ or the PKK. Action speaks louder than words, and in choosing its allies the US has shown clearly where its priorities really lie: power over democracy, influence over honesty and war over peace.”
“I must lose in a world where only the winner is a Man, a human being. I was not a real Man. I was a queer, a half-Man, a pseudo-Man, like a woman…. Men fought and won, they fought other men for the ownership of the rest of creation, lesser peoples, the losers, women, the Third World, as well as the natural environment. I could never be a real Man.
We must not give up our humanity to become like the Man. We must not seek to conquer, to become the master. Our gayness, our ability to love one another, is our humanity, and it must not be sold for the Man’s mastery over others. And if the straight Man’s revolution is based on mastery and conquest we will have no part in it. But we are going to make a gay revolution, a revolution that will be an assertion of humanity. And remembering what you taught us of our humanity, we gay men, together with women, and all the other victims, those who don’t seek to be masters, can create it.”
“Now, there’s fear in Washington. There’s fear among the oligarchs that this whole Pandora’s box could be opened, because the people are in the streets. Now the people are in the streets talking about the corruption, but if they start more intensively talking about the blood, if they follow that trail of blood, it leads directly back to Washington. It leads directly back to the suites of CACIF, the oligarchs who own Guatemala.”
Allan Nairn returned to Democracy Now! yesterday to talk more about the mass protests in Guatemala and the continuing role of the US government in propping up the oligarchy:
“Protecting the private interests of a powerful industry, which produces the public’s food supply, against public scrutiny is not a legitimate government interest.” – Judge B. Lynn Winmill, striking down Idaho’s unconstitutional ag gag law
Hooray! The first domino to fall. You can read the whole decision at the link here. It’s a lesson in the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Congratulations and thanks to the ALDF and all the other plaintiffs.
“If realized in Honduras, charter cities will be founded on mass land theft, violation of human rights, and repression and criminalization of popular movements fighting to defend their communities.”
The organizers of the charter cities event are familiar names from the US and Latin American rightwing network. Kind of an inauspiciousmoment for such a meeting. The Honduran “president” has decided to send a representative rather than appear in person.
You can read the interesting analysis of OFRANEH (Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña, the federation of Honduran indigenous peoples’ organizations) in Spanish here.
...Ciertamente en Honduras se vive un caos inducido, que ha colocado a la democracia al borde del abismo. Recientemente la Organización Mundial de la Salud señaló un promedio de 102 asesinatos por cada cien mil habitantes, cifra que lo califica como el mas violento del planeta. La impunidad alcanza al 95% de los homicidios, y el debacle causado por el saqueo de instituciones estatales ha destruido el sistema de salud nacional.
No obstante la solución que pretende un grupúsculo de políticos y empresarios de rematar zonas del país al capital extranjero, donde se les permitirá una tabula rasa jurídica, es un simple negocio de la elite de poder, que dará lugar a islas de afluencia circundadas por un mar de pobreza y violencia. El fracaso de Honduras esta relacionado directamente con la condición de piratas de aquellos que han ejercido el poder y se han asociado con el narcotráfico en las ultimas décadas, permitiendo el colapso del sistema jurídico y la putrefacción de las fuerzas de seguridad.
Mientras en San Francisco se planifican las nuevas formas de gobernanza para Honduras, en la isla de Zacate Grande, golfo de Fonseca, se ha declarado un toque de queda; casualmente en un paraje vecino a donde pretenden los libertarios colocar en un inicio sus plataformas flotantes....
“It’s a Washington…where decades of trade deals like NAFTA and China have been signed with plenty of protections for corporations and their profits, but none of our environment or our workers who’ve seen factories shut their doors and millions of jobs disappear, workers whose right to organize and unionize has been under assault for the last eight years.
…
You know, in the years after her husband signed NAFTA, Senator Clinton would go around talking about how great it was and how many benefits it would bring. Now that she’s running for President, she says we need a time-out on trade. No one knows when this time-out will end. Maybe after the election…. ”
– Obama on the campaign trail speaking in Janesville, Wisconsin, February 2008 [Source]*
“[Obama advisor Austan Goolsbee] was frank in saying that the primary campaign has been necessarily domestically focused, particularly in the Midwest, and that much of the rhetoric that may be perceived to be protectionist is more reflective of political maneuvering than policy.
…Noting anxiety among many US domestic audiences about the US economic outlook, Goolsbee candidly acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign. …[H]e cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans.”
– Joseph De Mora, Canadian political and economic affairs consular officer, “REPORT ON US ELECTIONS – CHCGO MEETING WITH OBAMA ADVISOR AUSTAN GOOLSBEE” [Source]
“I would immediately call the president of Mexico, the president of Canada to try to amend NAFTA because I think that we can get labor agreements in that agreement right now. And it should reflect the basic principle that our trade agreements should not just be good for Wall Street, it should also be good for Main Street.”
“We should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced.”
- Obama on his supposed plan as president to prioritize renegotiating NAFTA [Source] [Source]
“At a time when the economy has been shrinking drastically and trade has been shrinking around the world...we probably want to make the economy more stabilized in the coming months before we have a long discussion around further trade negotiations.”
- Obama explaining to reporters why he won’t be moving to renegotiate NAFTA, August, 2009 [Source]
“[M]ake no mistake, this administration is committed to pursuing expanded trade and new trade agreements. It is absolutely essential to our economic future.”
- “REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON FINANCIAL RESCUE AND REFORM,” Obama speaking to representatives of the “financial industry,” Federal Hall, New York City, September 14, 2009 [Source]
Obama’s learned an important lesson: dispensing with even the pretense of democracy and cutting the public out of the process – except as passive recipients of placating paternalism – is much more efficient.
The LIBRE Initiative is the Latino outreach program of the Koch brothers’ political network. With millions of dollars from the Kochs and their allies since its founding in 2011, LIBRE has established a presence in 10 states and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on deceptive political ads. Its ultimate goal, shared with the broader network of Koch organizations, is to build political power by electing anti-government conservatives to office at all levels. LIBRE’s job is to help right-wingers into office by a) convincing more Latinos to support anti-government candidates, and/or b) discouraging other Latinos from bothering to vote by running attack ads on progressive candidates.
LIBRE is also part of another right-wing tactic – convincing religious voters that opposition to progressive taxes, unions, and government regulation are actually biblical positions….
