Reality Studio: a William S. Burroughs community

Bruce Eisner had this post on his blog about a William S. Burroughs Community on the web who call themselves Reality Studio.

 

Checked it out and found a great post on 'Henry Miller and William Burroughs: An Overview':

 

Also see Ian MacFadyen’s insightful response to RealityStudio’s overview: Henry Miller and William Burroughs: A Letter.

" ... After finishing with the summer job his father had negotiated for him at the St. Louis Post Dispatch, William S. Burroughs returned to Harvard in September 1935. It was his senior year. An English major, Burroughs had studied with the Shakespeare scholar George Kittredge and would retain throughout his life an ability to quote the bard from memory. However, he had been a diffident student. Biographer Ted Morgan describes Burroughs’ attitude toward this final year of college: “Back at Harvard it was more of the same — sexual blockage, a sense of isolation, classes.” The following June, Burroughs would skip his own commencement ceremony.

Given that Burroughs was an English major and would ultimately become an important member of what he called the “Shakespeare squadron,” it is difficult to imagine that he would have failed to note a major literary scandal that occurred as he was returning to school that year. His classmate James Laughlin — a steel heir who would go on to found New Directions, the modernist publishing house — managed to convince the estimable Harvard Advocate to print a story by a shocking new writer whose books could not yet be published in America. The writer was Henry Miller, who described the scandal in a 1935 letter to Lawrence Durrell:

Laughlin is the chap who tried to reprint my Aller Retour New York (under the title “Glittering Pie”). He had the first ten pages published in the Harvard Advocate, and then the Boston police descended upon the paper, destroyed the existent copies and locked the editorial staff up overnight, threatening them with a severe jail sentence.¹

Local papers ran headlines such as “Pornography at Harvard!” and the Advocate’s editors were compelled to resign. “I do not recall,” observed historian Arthur Schlesinger in his memoirs, “that the Harvard authorities protested this miserable assault on the freedom of expression.”²

Was this the moment that Burroughs first became aware of Henry Miller, the writer to whom he would so often be yoked in later years? Or did Burroughs, who supposedly viewed literary matters askance until Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac convinced him of his own genius, consider this scandal a tempest in a teapot, in-fighting at a college newspaper that never interested him anyway?

Ironically, though Burroughs may or may not have known the name of Miller in 1935, Miller certainly knew the name Burroughs. In 1936 Obelisk Press in Paris issued his second book, Black Spring. In the chapter titled “Burlesk,” Miller wrote impressionistically about the crowds outside the “fastest, cleanest show in the world”: “Outside it’s exactly like the Place des Vosges or the Haymarket or Covent Garden, except that these people have faith — in the Burroughs Adding Machine.” For Miller, the company founded by Burroughs’ grandfather had become symbolic of a modern malaise: “faith” in the calculator, finance, technology, materialism — precisely the things that the author of Naked Lunch would come to satirize in his creepy tycoons.

This thematic connection between the two writers was apparent even before Burroughs could be considered a writer. In a 1949 letter in which he railed against conformism, Kerouac clearly viewed Miller and Burroughs as exemplary non-conformists:

Wanting money is wanting the dishonesty of a servant. Money hates us, like a servant; because it is false. Henry Miller was right; Burroughs was right. Roll your own, I say.³ ... "

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ISRAEL'S NEW MANTRA - HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE

A DesertPeace Editorial

No, it's not a new book by Dale Carnegie, Israel came up with the concept on its own. Paranoia is probably the main reason behind it, but whatever the reasons, Israel is doing its best to lose whatever friends it made over the past few years.

Arrogance is another factor, Israel will never admit that it was wrong.... they will lie about incidents, deny wrongdoings, but never admit to them.

Yet,they expect the world to accept them as they are. They expect the world to condone the policies of genocide and apartheid.... and if they don't, it's OK.... nothing will change. As long as the United States continues to support them no matter what they do, these policies will continue.

BUT, what about the rest of the world? Let's start with the Vatican; for many years they have literally bent over backwards to 'make things right' with Israel. They have altered many of their positions regarding the Jewish people and have maintained a cordial relationship with Israel since establishing ties with them in 1993. Today, that relationship is on 'shaky ground' as can be seen in THIS Ynet report and THIS statement from the HCEF.

In other words, Israel's interpretation of a relationship and a friendship is 'do it my way, do what I want and we shall remain friends'. Things just don't work that way in the real world....

Another recent example of Israel losing support can be seen in reports from London. The British Royal Family never were great 'fans' of Israel, they are not that crazy about any nation that helped the sun set on their Empire, but there again the relationship was a cordial one. But regarding a visit to Israel by HRH Prince Charles, here is what aides to the Prince had to say... " there is no chance the prince would ever visit Israel as such a visit would boost Israel's international image." A full report about this can be read HERE.

At the UN yesterday the United States criticized the UN Human Rights Council for focusing all the time on Israel while failing to address human rights violations in Zimbabwe, North Korea, Iran, Belarus and Cuba. Continual focus on Israel at the UN just might reveal the FACT that the US has been supportive of every crime committed by Israel since 1948, could that be the real reason for the criticism? A report of what was said at the UN can be read HERE.

If Israel continues on the path it is on, it will lose everything. The world is slowly (way too slowly) waking up to the reality of what zionism really is. The following song, sung by one of Israel's greatest supporters says it all as far as Israel's attitudes go.... attitudes that they best change for their own good....

 

source: ~ link ~

 

via: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

Cut Israel Off

by Charley Reese

 

It is long past time for American politicians to quit carrying water for the state of Israel and its powerful U.S. lobby. Congress' craven obedience to the lobby is a disgrace.

America's strategic interests in the Middle East lie with the Arab countries. Israel is a strategic and economic liability. The U.S. government's slavish support of Israel brands us as a hypocrite and is responsible for most of the hostility toward the U.S.

Americans have been brainwashed into believing that it's the Arabs, and the Palestinians in particular, who don't want peace. That is a big lie. The Palestinians made an enormous concession when they agreed to settle for a state on 18 percent of Palestine. Saudi Arabia proposed several years ago a peace plan in which all of the Arab countries would recognize Israel in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. The Israelis rejected it out of hand, just as they reject Arab efforts to have the Middle East a nuclear-free zone.

Israel's goal is and always has been to take all of Palestine and to get rid of the Palestinians. The Israelis employed ethnic cleansing in 1948 and again in 1967 to make hundreds of thousands of Palestinians refugees. For 40 years, the Israelis have refused to give back the Palestinian and Syrian lands they seized in war. They have blatantly violated international law by building settlements on occupied land, and by violating the airspace of other sovereign countries.

Palestinians are the victims, not the villains, in this case. The Israelis make their lives miserable in the hope they will give up and leave. At the same time, the Israelis, in cahoots with the American government, maintain a charade of proposed peace talks. They of course never come to fruition. The Israeli government is not about to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state. If they give the Palestinians anything, it will be a patchwork of enclaves completely surrounded and controlled by Israel. Having created 700,000 Palestinian refugees, the Israelis have from the beginning refused to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses, all of which Israel confiscated on the specious grounds that they were "abandoned property."

Without U.S. aid, which now is conservatively estimated to total $108 billion (think of the infrastructure and schools that amount could build in the U.S.), and without the U.S. wielding its veto every time the United Nations tries to act, none of this would be possible.

It is not just the Muslim world that hates our pro-Israel foreign policy, for sound reasons that it is unjust and cruel. Europeans and others around the world are contemptuous of America's slavelike obedience to a small foreign power. It has gotten to the point that to be seen as an ally of the United States is viewed negatively.

The Arab and Muslim people, with the exception of al-Qaeda, don't hate America or Americans. It is the pro-Israel foreign policy and, of course, our invasions of two Muslim countries that they hate. Virtually all of the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda generated in this country has its source in the Israeli lobby and in Israel itself.

Thanks to the unconstitutional largess of the cowardly Congress, Israel is a rich country and one of the world's leading military powers. It doesn't need American aid. It is time to quit dancing to the tune of a lobby with dual loyalties and to pursue America's interests.

Americans are being betrayed by their own politicians, and it's time to treat those scoundrels with the contempt they deserve.

source: ~ link ~

via: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

Vaccine Ingredients

~ a representative sample ~

 

"Truth, having been ground to earth, is rising again"

The American People are Beginning To Get It

15 Nov 2007
Column: Ernest Partridge

The Crisis Papers

 

"To Bush & Co.... we the people owe no more allegiance than a child owes to the criminal who stole her from her home and now abuses her while posing as her father."

Mark Crispin Miller

Propaganda is a sprinter, but truth is a long-distance runner.

And at last, the truth may be overtaking the propaganda and the lies.

In the new edition of his riveting book, Fooled Again, Mark Crispin Miller describes a public groundswell that should have Bush, Cheney and the Busheviks very worried.

Truth, having been ground to earth, is rising again.

Despite compelling statistical, circumstantial, anecdotal and eyewitness evidence that two presidential and numerous congressional elections have been stolen, this evidence has been discounted, ignored and ridiculed by the mainstream media and, amazingly, by the victimized Democratic Party and its defeated candidates and even by some progressive publications.

Even so, a sizeable and growing portion of the American public isn't buying the official and bi-partisan assurances that the US elections are, by and large, on the level, and that the Bush/Cheney regime is therefore legitimate. For example, an August, 2006 Zogby poll reports that only 45% of the population is "very confident" that Bush and Cheney won re-election "fair and square" in 2004. About a third were "not at all confident."

In the "Afterword" to Fooled Again, comprising one hundred pages of new material, Miller chronicles the determined and persistent resistance of "official Democrats" to the very idea that they were the victims of massive election fraud. Astonishingly, progressive publications (yes, there are still a few), such as The Nation, Mother Jones, and the liberal websites, TomPaine.com and Salon.com, have all published caustic articles debunking thoroughly researched and scrupulously argued accusations of election fraud. Familiar ad hominem rebuttals are trotted out: "get over it," "sore losers," "conspiracy theorists." Far more often, the fraud issue is denied even the dignity of mention and rebuttal. With the noteworthy exception of Catherine Crier and Lou Dobbs, the issue is virtually ignored on cable "news," and, on network TV news, the embargo is total.

Meanwhile, the evidence of fraud remains on record and it accumulates. Extreme exit poll anomalies, with final totals shifting to the GOP with statistical improbabilities of millions to one. The widespread use of unverifiable paperless "touchscreen" voting machines, secretly programmed by GOP partisans. Unsecured access to these machines. Lost, uncounted, and illegally destroyed ballots. Precinct returns in excess of registrations. (For the specifics on all this and more, read Miller's book and visit the numerous websites devoted to election fraud. Among them, bradblog.com, blackboxvoting.org, www.votetrustusa.org, and uscountvotes.org. Caution: be sure to order the second edition of Fooled Again. Amazon and Barnes and Noble are listing the first edition).

Amazingly, despite the silence of the media and the Democratic Party regulars, the message of the stolen elections is getting to the public, thanks to the determined and independent efforts of numerous writers, scholars, bloggers, and film makers, and their creative use of new and evolving communications technologies such as the internet and the DVD.

Mark Crispin Miller thus describes this grassroots groundswell. (For specific names and titles, see the book. pp. 355-8):

The evidence [of election fraud] was always more convincing than the sophistries deployed against it... Throughout the months preceding the 2006 election, many of us lectured endlessly in schools and churches, rented halls and private homes, spoke out on independent radio and posted pieces all over the internet...

Offline, meanwhile, there were independent voices on the air, their numbers growing as the story slowly spread throughout the nation... And the movement also had strong champions in the world of print... and online...

All such effort gradually conveyed the truth about America's election, and the crying need for genuine reform to an ever larger, ever more receptive audience – which was, in fact, not just an audience but increasingly a citizenry mobilized to salvage and invigorate (or rather, realize) US democracy...

And so the people got it, recognizing instantly the likelihood that (a) Bush & Co. stole its "mandate" in 2004, and (b) that the regime was not above attempting it again.

Accordingly, ignored by the mainstream media and by the immobilized Democratic Party, dismissed and even ridiculed by many presumably "liberal" writers and publications, the issue of election fraud has nonetheless survived and prevailed among the general public. Consequently, the legitimacy of the Bush/Cheney regime is eroding. Meanwhile, with the ongoing exposure of Bushevik lies (e.g., the alleged Saddam-9/11 connection and other concocted justifications for the Iraq War), the credibility of the regime is also disintegrating. Bush's and Cheney's approval ratings are at an all-time low, and falling.

The once-formidable GOP/MSM propaganda machine is sputtering and running out of fuel. "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me – you can't get fooled again."

Truth, crushed to earth, is on the rise.

Will another national emergency, with Dubya and bullhorn on the rubble pile, or in a flight suit on the carrier, once again mobilize support for "the commander guy" and bail out this poor excuse of an administration? Possibly, but don't count on it. Re-runs fare poorly in both show biz and politics.

In a January, 2006 review of Miller's book, I wrote that "if we are to restore the ballot box to the voters, we need a media, we need an opposition party, we need an aroused public, and we need a miracle. But take heart: history tells us that political crises have a way of producing miracles." Since then, we've made great strides. Two of those conditions are being met, as an aroused and skeptical public is abandoning the mainstream media and is turning toward a new dissenting media in the internet. However, the Democratic Party remains dumb-frozen, even as millions of its traditional supporters are deserting the Party in disgust.

In the United States today, there is among the public a huge, growing, but still leaderless mass of discontented citizens. These are the three-quarters of the population that tell the pollsters that "the country is moving in the wrong direction." These are the two-thirds that reject Bush and Cheney and their Iraq War, and that disapprove of the Democratic Congress in even greater numbers. These are the citizens who are well aware that their Constitutional rights have been abolished, their franchise nullified, their public treasury looted, their public infrastructure trashed, their social services impoverished, and the livelihood of millions of our workers "outsourced."

While the Democratic Party was elected to Congress to address these crises, the party leaders act as if they are living in some other country: "The Republic of Beltway." If they persist in this delusion, they may manage to lose the next "sure-thing" election, whether or not the GOP engineers another "fix."

If the Democratic Party is to take charge and lead us out of the current swamp of corruption, exploitation and ignorance, it must take inventory of the present political and economic dangers, secure fair and accurate elections, change direction radically and immediately, and act decisively.

The impeachment of Dick Cheney, and then of George Bush, would be an appropriate first step.

As an anonymous French politician once said, "the people are marching and I must follow, for I am their leader."

*************

Copyright 2007 by Ernest Partridge

Bio Tag: Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He has taught Philosophy at the University of California, and in Utah, Colorado and Wisconsin. He publishes the website, "The Online Gadfly" (www.igc.org/gadfly) and co-edits the progressive website, "The Crisis Papers" (www.crisispapers.org). His book in progress, "Conscience of a Progressive," can be seen at www.igc.org/gadfly/progressive/^toc.htm .

 

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'The Military-Industrial Complex rules in Russia'

By Jonathan Power

27 Oct 2007

LONDON - In his autobiography, Georgi Arbatov, the eminence grise of the Soviet foreign policy establishment, asked this question, referring to the Soviet intervention in Angola and Afghanistan, “Why did we in the eyes of the world become an aggressive expansionist power in the second half of the 1970s?” But he didn’t really answer it.

So given the opportunity to talk to him for a good three hours I had the time to push him for an answer, an answer that presidents Carter and Reagan wished they knew when they had to deal with the Soviet Union. Both overreacted, the former by arming the mujahidin that later transfused into Al Qaeda and the latter by licensing the South Africans to fight an Angolan liberation army (the MPLA, now the government) which then turned to Cuba to help them defeat South Africa and make a negotiated peace possible. Of course, it is true if they known the answer their policies might not have changed one wit.

“My guess”, replied Arbatov, “is that our military-industrial complex had grown to such proportions that it escaped political control. The leaders depended on the military-industrial complex to stay in power. So they didn’t want to estrange relations with it. Not everything was controlled by one man. The whole system was infiltrated by the military industrial complex.”

I then asked Arbatov if the military-industrial complex was today under control. “The economic difficulties of post Soviet Russia”, he replied, “make military expenditures much more modest than they were, but we have a new thing, our new leader, Putin. He is in the hands of this military-industrial complex, and a lot of his appointments go to these people. I don’t know how much control he has over them. In general they have to worry about their survival in the military-industrial complex, not about enhancing peace… Maybe Putin is afraid of being blamed for neglecting the needs of the military. The communists would blame him, Zhironovsky would blame him. You have a lot of adventurers now.”

Clearly, this pressure on Putin would have led to a degree of hardening of Russian foreign policy even without the provocation of the expansion of Nato, the growing influence of the U.S. in the soft underbelly of Russia, the former Asian republics, and the decision to build on Polish and Czech soil an anti-missile system. But for those with a bent towards traditional Russian paranoia, an urge to recapture a past imperial status, this is all the evidence they need to justify an attempt to rebuild the Soviet military machine.

“But the main thing is that real negotiations have stopped”, adds Arbatov in an important caveat. “Both sides are at fault. We need to start with two or three summits to discuss the new international situation, possible lines on the behaviour and responsibilities of big countries… You need to meet your adversary regularly and you get to know him and then it is easier to negotiate. This meeting in Kennebunkport. This wasn’t a negotiation. I know how the old summit meetings were. All organisations, including mine, were busy up to the ears- the whole political and military establishment. We had to work, work, work. Now they have lost interest. Now it is theatre, just to show. I have no idea where they get their information from. Putin’s is the least transparent governmental system in my memory. Even in Stalin’s time we knew Malenkov meant this and this, and after it became much more visible.”

Once launched on a critique of Putin, Arbatov does not spare the knife. “ Putin has done a lot of good work- he has re-established the governmental system. But at the same time he gives not a single speech that gives the prospect. What are we striving for? What do we want to have in internal policy, in foreign policy?”

In Arbatov’s view it is time overdue that the two countries cut back their nuclear armaments. “Both sides have lost their enemy. They see no imminent danger from the other side. Neither seems to understand that it can quickly reappear. Just the existence of so many weapons makes deteriorating relations more likely and stability less dependable…Being honest, we in Russia are not right in our approach. We have so many weapons we could decrease the numbers unilaterally and show an example.”

Arbatov’s final point: “If you have so many nuclear weapons you have to say there is a plan to get rid of them even if you can’t give an exact date. Otherwise other countries say, if you have them why can’t we?”

Later that evening I walked by the Kremlin. Who is listening? Neither the military-industrial complex in Russia nor, come to that, its almost equally powerful counterpart in the U.S.

 

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Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Sufis: From Puritanism to Transcendentalism

" ... At a time when political relations between Iran and the United States are so tense and the two nations are viewing each other with hostility and suspicion, it is important to remember that the cultural and literary relations between them have not always been so acrimonious. Also, at a time when religious fundamentalism has such a grip on the minds of a sizeable minority of American citizens and when the Religious Right and the bizarre concept of Christian Zionism exert such a powerful and largely negative influence on politics in the United States, it is refreshing to analyse the views of one of the most important American thinkers and writers on religious issues.

In a way, it is sad that nearly two hundred years after the age of great religious enlightenment in the United States, one has to restate these concepts again. However, it is important to know that the rich heritage of religious thinking in the United States itself contains the lofty ideas that can lift religion from its present sorry state and restore it to the more spiritual and universal status that is its true calling. Alternatively, Emerson's restatement of the rich spiritual heritage of Iranian mystics and poets can remind the Iranians that the present domination of fundamentalist ideology is an aberration of their long history and that they would do better to return to those loftier concepts. Above all, the Iranians and the Americans can come to realise that they share many common values and that they should not allow transient political considerations to undermine their common humanity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was the father figure of American literature and could justifiably be called the founder of the study of both comparative literature and comparative religion in the United States, and one of the greatest religious reformers that America has ever produced. The study of his religious thought charts the journey from a narrow and dogmatic religious outlook towards a mystical, universal outlook. If William Blake could be regarded as a British prophet, that title also belongs to Emerson in the United States. The study of Emerson's journey from Puritanism, towards Unitarianism, towards Transcendentalism and ultimately towards a universal religion of love and spirituality provides a powerful antidote to the narrow and fundamentalist interpretations of religion prevalent in both the East and the West today. ... "

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Ten Thousand Letters to Impeach Cheney

- Please sign the Impeach Cheney petition to your Congressman:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/424/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=651

- Do you remember how to set pen to paper? How to write a letter?
Be a patriot and do it now!

- Dennis Kucinich's House Resolution 333 for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney has been taken off the House floor, and has instead been sent to the Judiciary Committee for "further study." This maneuver, organized by Pelosi and the Democratic leadership, is consistent with their mantra that impeachment is "off the table." But, we are told Nancy Pelosi is reported to have replied to the question of impeachment that if she received 10,000 hand written letters she would proceed with it. What are we waiting for?

- Cindy Sheehan wrote this:

Dear Friends
Instead of sending your impeachment letters for Dick Cheney to Nancy Pelosi's office, send them to my office so we can get an official count. Please send them to:
.
Nancy Pelosi
c/o Cindy Sheehan
RE: Impeach Dick Cheney
1260 Mission Blvd
San Francisco, Ca 94103
.
Please pass this around and have them sent ... as soon as possible and we will have them delivered to her office in San Francisco before Thanksgiving [or Christmas].