MAYBE ONE WORD THEN – ATROCIOUS! “OF A VERY POOR QUALITY”

Although the costumes were very colourful.

I like Stuart Driver’s comment in The Sunday Times best of all: “All the substance of a poppadom.”

A new sensation
is not granted to everyone,
 
not to everyone everywhere,
but to us here, a new sensation
 
strikes paralyzing,
strikes dumb,
 
strikes the senses numb,
sets the nerves quivering;
 
I am sure you see
what I mean;
 
it was an old tree
such as we see everywhere,
 
anywhere here—and some barrel staves
and some bricks
 
and an edge of the wall
uncovered and the naked ugliness
 
and then…music? O, what I meant
by music when I said music, was—
 
music sets up ladders,
it makes us invisible,
 
it sets us apart,
it lets us escape;
 
but from the visible
there is no escape;
 
there is no escape from the spear
that pierces the heart.




No 22 - from H.D.’s ‘Tribute to the Angels’

People are still in denial about the free-speech crisis. This week, a new report on how Brexit-backing and right-leaning academics feel ostracised and silenced on campus was dismissed by woke commentators. The same people insist cancel culture is a myth. Those who moan about cancellation are just rich columnists and writers who don’t like being disagreed with, they say, wilfully overlooking the fact that vast numbers of everyday people have been reprimanded, sacked from their jobs and even questioned by police over things they’ve said online. We have to keep exposing censorship every time it occurs – whether it’s being done by the state, Silicon Valley corporations or mobs of correct-thinkers – and stand up for the right of people to say, write, utter and disseminate any opinion they like.

Kleptocracy is a government whose corrupt leaders use political power to appropriate the wealth of their nation, typically by embezzling or misusing  government funds at the expense of the wider population.

Kleptocrats are rulers who implement highly inefficient economic policies, expropriate the wealth of citizens, and use the proceeds for their own glorification or consumption.

Lebanon is a classic case of kleptocratic government – corruption in Lebanon takes the form of the political elite. Corruption in Lebanon has old roots …

The Palace of my Beloved

I will build for you each night
A palace luminous
With whole blocks of emerald
And diamond stones.
Shall it be skyblue as your eyes,
Or green as your wishes:
Be, and the palace too shall be.

Said Akl is a Lebanese poet

“Leading their charge is Donald Trump, a bone spur warrior, a liar and a fraud, a grotesque caricature of a strong man, with the backbone of a bully”

The Unraveling of America   https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/covid-19-end-of-american-era-wade-davis-1038206/ via @RollingStone

'God does not belong to the scientist, 
nor to the logician; 
he belongs to the poets,
to the realm of dreams; 
he is the symbol of Beauty,
Beauty itself.
 
Gaugin 1897

The Great Truth
 
No paradox for this great truth
for one without the other
does not exist.
 
Such noble aspirations
of intellect and strength
pale quickly in the heat of mid-day sun.
 
But marry such sweet intellect
with passion unabridged
then perfect is the world and thou.

(source unknown to me)

Apocalypse Now (1979) – Willard … “It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz’s memory, any more than being back in Saigon was an accident. “There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story is really a confession, then so is mine.”

The Fugitive Stag (2020) – “There is no way to tell her (Goddess) story without telling my own” – partly an exorcism, a confession, but primarily a celebration. G ap Iorwerth.

Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will.” — Joseph Goebbels

Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.” — Joseph Goebbels

The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.” — Joseph Goebbels

We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths. Joseph Goebbels

This film tells the story of a Russian soldier, who was subjected to terrible trials by the war, deprived of his home and family, threw in the concentration camp. But fate did not break his spirit – he survived, defended his right to be a man, preserved the ability to love…

Directed by Sergei Bondarchuk Composer Veniamin Basner Principal roles: Sergey Bondarchuk, Pavel Polunin, Zinaida Kiriyenko, Pavel Volkov, Yuri Averin, Kirill Alekseev, Pavel Vinnikov, Evgeny Teterin, Anatoly Chemodurov, Lev Borisov

FATE OF A MAN (drama, dir. Sergei Bondarchuk, 1959) https://youtu.be/ov7bKyahGL4 via @YouTube