Ooops. . .

In the Name of the Father

 

A Kennedy. A hero.

 

Long Remembered

Perhaps the most deeply felt sequence in all American movies.

Merry Christmas Eve to all!

Chile!

All for Julian

Dr. Jill Stein, John Pilger, Daniel Ellsberg, Aaron Mate, Francis Boyle, Alexander Mercouris and many others in support of the hero of our time.

 

Endless Lies

X-Mas

Man

Shithole

'Nuff Said

People Who Should Be Killed

Under the Influence

"I dwell in possibility
A fairer house than prose
More numerous of windows
Superior of doors
Of chambers as the cedars
Impregnable of eye"
- Emily Dickinson

An orchestra conductor has murdered his mistress; and has covered his tracks well. But for the loss of a boutonnière. He confesses, into the blue blaze of Blythe Danner's eyes.



Peter Falk and John Cassavetes first worked together on the director's 1970 masterpiece Husbands, beginning a six-year sunburst of collaboration that would include perhaps the greatest American movie of the 1970s, A Woman Under the Influence (1974) (as Love Streams [1984] is perhaps the greatest of the 80s), Elaine May's jaw-dropping Mikey and Nicky (1976), and the three best episodes of the TV series Columbo: "Etude in Black" and "Swan Song" -- directed by Cassavetes under the pseudonym Nicholas Colasanto -- and "A Friend in Deed" -- the best 100 minutes of 1970s American television, with Cassavetes and Elaine May both on set (Woman Under the Influence and Mikey and Nicky were in post-production / pre-production during the making of the episode), directed by Ben Gazzara.

Gazzara, of course, was the third element of the sunburst, also first working with the director on Husbands -- and beyond. He would be with Cassavetes on Opening Night (1977) and Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) (another masterpiece). Ben Gazzara was the roué of the trio: the most glamorous, largest, the most "star-like," the warmest and most romantic, the most corrupt and least loyal; the weakest. If we include Killing of a Chinese Bookie and take a vision of the whole, what Cassavetes has given us (among many other things) is a kaleidoscope of 1970s white American middle-age maleness (strangely ignored by such gruesome mythomaniacs as Tarantino and P.T. Anderson): each man changing and exchanging shapes, colors, roles, names, jobs.



Gazzara's direction of "A Friend in Deed" is very beautiful. As he was a generous-hearted actor, so as director. He balances the overall perfect structure (there's not a false note in the almost 100-minute episode, leading to the astonishing ending, certainly the best of any Columbo) with out-of-story detail and constant memorable moments: the beautiful girl attached to the Commissioner at the backgammon table; Columbo almost burning up the Commissioner’s limousine with his cigar; the detective's first visit to Janice Caldwell’s bedroom, before first fade-out, washed in Kubrickian light and sound, as he instantly recognizes the set-up; the street bar – "place of business" to Cassavetes veterans Val Avery and Eleanor Zee; how ready Columbo's colleagues are to believe anything out of laziness and rote; Artie Jessup’s fence dressed like a drop-out from The Real Don Steele Show; the detective's reaction when told by the coroner what was found in Margaret Halperin's lungs ("Soap, Lieutenant. Soap."); the very funny visitor from Holcombe House, wandering onto the LAPD murder scene; Falk trying to buy a new watch-band from the lovely Arlene Martell; Columbo's handling of the used-car salesman stud, and the salesman's handling of the detective; the strange little bald guy who rushes Jessup as Mark Halperin’s bar set-up begins; Columbo's fear as he tries to stop the Commissioner from destroying himself, by framing Jessup; Val Avery’s look of deep respect toward Falk as the trap is sprung on Halperin.



Gazzara and cinematographer William Cronjager's searching, hand-held, close, constantly moving camera captures an undertone missing from all of Cassavetes's work (and perhaps a major failing): the characters are seen through a class-based lens. For all the oppressions and limitations Cassavetes's lost dreamers struggle against, economic forces and structures are not among them. Here Gazzara makes them felt. Commissioner Mark Halperin, intensely played by Richard Kiley, paves the way for LAPD Reichsmarschall Daryl Gates. Halperin mouths word-for-word what would constantly drip from Gates's mouth: trying to balance protection of LA's gated communities with the "so-called" problems of the inner city; bleating about "junkies and losers and welfare-cheats" as Halperin lies back in his Bel-Air bedroom -- bought and paid for by his wife. (Another indication of Gazzara giving everyone his due: as played by Rosemary Murphy, Margaret Halperin is a pretentious upper-class liberal, lacking any genuine warmth and eminently murderable.) As given to us by Gazzara, the Commissioner is seen as a decadent protector of rot, free-and-happy to: gamble, procure prostitution, break-and-enter, plant false evidence, burgle, blackmail, become an accessory after the fact in murder, and actual murder itself. Gazzara opens, briefly and only at times, the immense -- much more immense today (as everywhere) than in the relatively egalitarian 70s -- class divide of Los Angeles -- a place where the strong are allowed to eat the weak, in particular the weak husband cuckolded over-and-over again by the eventually murdered wife (and then getting away with it because of his position, but for the genius of the main character), where the strong husband cheats over-and-over on the stuffy rich wife, lives off her, and murders her. Gazzara's characters are seen as products and agents of class -- something never felt under Cassavetes.

Also, if Cassavetes seeks to "reimagine representation by situating the individual in a matrix of influences and relationships that he or she is unable to rise above" (in the words of Raymond Carney), is it possible we come closer to that reimagination by placing the matrix within a more classical movie structure? Has Gazzara done that? Can we view the Commissioner as representing Columbo's own matrix, one he is trying to overcome?

No, we can't. And Gazzara does not. While incomparable, Falk does not step out of the role we pretty much have assigned to him before the story begins. And the parameters of 1970s network TV (even in this Year of Watergate) are also not breached. "You just lost your badge, my friend." That is where Falk and Gazzara do not go. Even though “Friend” is great popular art, we are left with the knowledge that it would never happen this way. An LAPD Commissioner bagged for domestic murder by one of his own Lieutenants? Perhaps if the up-front, first-day evidence pointed heavily toward the Commissioner, they must run with it. But the Lieutenant uncovering the truth about his boss through dogged brilliance – when all the initial evidence points toward an easily framed three-time loser? Never happen.

But this would (notice the framed photo of Simone Weil on the fireplace mantel).



And so would this.

Greatness Revisited

Showtime (alas!) has come through. First, Oliver Stone's two-hour version. Then in March 2022, a four-hour release. Later in '22, the Blu-ray completion.

 

Eternal

"I'm afraid we were misled. All the critics, myself included, were misled very early. I see that now. We spent too much time and effort microanalyzing the details of the assassination when all the time it was obvious, it was blatantly obvious that it was a conspiracy. Don't you think that the men who killed Kennedy had the means to do it in the most sophisticated and subtle way? They chose not to. Instead, they picked the shooting gallery that was Dealey Plaza and did it in the most barbarous and openly arrogant manner. The cover story was transparent and designed not to hold, to fall apart at the slightest scrutiny. The forces that killed Kennedy wanted the message clear: 'We are in control and no one -- not the President, nor Congress, nor any elected official -- no one can do anything about it.' It was a message to the people that their government was powerless. And the people eventually got the message. Consider what has happened since the Kennedy assassination. People see government today as unresponsive to their needs, yet the budget and power of the military and intelligence establishment have increased tremendously.

"The tyranny of power is here. Current events tell us that those who killed Kennedy can only perpetuate their power by promoting social upheaval both at home and abroad. And that will lead not to revolution but to repression. I suggest to you, my friend, that the interests of those who killed Kennedy now transcend national boundaries and national priorities. No doubt we are dealing now with an international conspiracy. We must face that fact -- and not waste any more time microanalyzing the evidence. That's exactly what they want us to do. They have kept us busy for so long. And I will bet, buddy, that is what will happen to you. They'll keep you very, very busy and, eventually, they'll wear you down."

-- Vince Salandria to Gaeton Fonzi, late-1975

Peace

A United States Information Agency documentary on the most extraordinary Presidential speech of the 20th-century.

And Then Home. . .

"Why are you running?"

"Don't you know?

"No."

"Because I am longing. . . ."

-- Day of Wrath

It was born during Assassination Autumn, and no other American TV series has ever been as drenched in sorrow and loss -- largely due to Pete Rugolo's music -- as this one. There's an ominous death rattle on the soundtrack, the death rattle of its time: a world of gasoline and bus stations, diners, local motels, drive-ins, stone cities, asphalt palaces, mechanic shops, coal trucks, great warehouses and amusement parks, factories and pool halls -- a world where the air still smelled of the earth. And a power-saturated universe seething with conspiracies, all focused on the wrongly-accused of a famous murder, while the real murderer runs free. The mournful eyes of the star -- the eyes of a mountaineer -- and the voice -- like a wound in the throat -- match the eyes and timbre of the fallen leader.

It is hard to think of The Fugitive apart from the confusion and hurt the country must have felt as it began to realize the center of American life was passing the age where it could still look forward; now people looked back into memory, into the past of the nation. . .

"Landscape with Running Figures," Parts I and II.

Mort

 

R.I.P. -- The bravest and most important comedian of his time.

 

Bill Davy with a heartfelt tribute.

The Girl We Left Behind

There were more than two Rosemary Clooneys. This lovely and emotionally complicated woman had many rooms to her mansion, creatively and otherwise. Yet there's a dividing line in the forward movement of her life that most people can agree upon -- her 1968 breakdown, coming after years of a Catholic holding-together of a marriage to the brutal and ever-cheating Jose Ferrer (a marriage and remarriage, resulting in five children) while falling ever deeper in love with arranger Nelson Riddle -- the final breaking point her presence at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, June 5th, 1968, witnessing the National Security State execution of her close personal friend Robert F. Kennedy.

For years after she did not perform. In '77 she came back - dramatically different look, dramatically different sound. Most jazz fans seem to prefer the post-breakdown, slatternly, husky, wearied Rose. Not a chance.

The young Rose was a blue ribbon for blonde ladies in black. Her eyes were blue with a pannier of diamonds, wistful, looking out with tenderness, offering up, timidly, a little love. And they would glow. It is not common for blue eyes to glow in the dark of modestly-lit bars or clubs or recording studios, but Rose's light came from within. Her sound back then was full of red cheeks and Christmas, the color of it on most songs as startling as a view of wild red berries in a field of snow. And something more, a warning: with each song she seems to be burning a piece of the distant past, ash deep within her purity thickening from a membrane to a shroud. If love is a state of grace and must be protected by sacramental walls, then Rose did all she could to do the protecting.

Prelude and Opening

"When you love someone, you don't abandon them, no matter how they treat you."

-- Anthony Perkins in Psycho

The strobing, bristling, fractured malignancy of a black-and-white TV image. Music with no rest, an aching loop of driving hysteria. And the star, the nominal star, with her name at the end of the acting titles. . .

A drift across the landscape of a seasonless hotbox:  Phoenix, Arizona -- one of many urban weeds sprouted in the postwar explosion of Western cowboy economies. This is the middle of December? Friday ~ Crucifixion day. Move toward a gargoyle of a building, beyond it, to the left. Now toward what appears to be the Texas School Book Depository. We enter it, the window. Is Lee Harvey Oswald waiting for us on the other side, as he was not on that other day of Crucifixion? Indeed he is.

I can think of no other previous piece of American popular culture containing a character such as the one we're about to meet: a young sexually-frustrated male loner who takes his frustrations out in mad violence. The 1960s (and beyond) begin here: Oswald, Bremer, Hinckley, Speck, Whitman, Raymond Shaw, Sirhan, Ray, Manson. Most of them much more than lone killers, most with deep and sinister intelligence connections. But the myth is born here. How did Hitchcock know?

The divorced, debt-ridden poonhound looms over his latest catch, a girl so lathered up she never ate her egg salad sandwich or drank her bottle of pop, although it is already quarter-to-three, a lengthy lunchbreak. They entangle again, and we notice the mole on the girl's upper back and the stiffness of the man's Brylcreemed hair ('though not as stiff as is John Gavin). She breaks away from his touch and his glibness, to dress and to leave. Each act and word of longing from her is met with lounge-lizard glibness, or self-pity, from the man. "Will you lick the stamps?" he asks her, referring to the alimony he must mail to his run-away, far-away ex-wife. "I'll lick the stamps" she answers -- a moment always getting hoots from film students and revival crowds. Actually, a cause for one of the most heartbreaking zooms in movie history. When he asks her if she wants to leave him, she says "I'm thinking of it" -- a lie, for she winds up destroying her job, reputation, family, and her life, by stealing $40,000 for him, for their marriage. When he mentions marriage, he says she'll swing. What does he mean? Open marriage? The sorrow of it; and the blinds -- draped over the world she imagines, one she will never have.

One thinks of the final shot of the work, of the white car being pulled from the black muck. The terror of it is obvious: Herrmann's music, the cut to it from Bates in his padded cell and the dissolve to the skeleton beneath his face. But something more. We have just listened to Simon Oakland's demystifications, his social psychology babble "explaining" Norman. Where is Marion's story here? Where is her pain and confusion and sadness and loneliness? Why is this attractive woman so desperate to marry? Why has she stayed in that nothing job for 10 years? Why does she still live with her ice-cold sister Lila? (Both the boyfriend and Lila remain affectless at the end, when told of Marion's murder.)

Marion's story is buried with her. That is the real terror. A story Hitchcock tells in a chain of masterpieces embracing female suffering, but not here. Bergman in Notorious. Doris Day in The Man Who Knew Too Much. Vera Miles in The Wrong Man. Novak and Bel Geddes in Vertigo. Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest. Tippi Hedren and Suzanne Pleshette in The Birds. Hedren in Marnie. Far from being a cold manipulator of movie audiences, Alfred Hitchcock was one of the deepest feeling (and greatest) artists of the 20th Century. . .

Boo

The Greatest Dissolve in Movie History?

Over at Jaime Weinman's fine website "Something Old, Nothing New," there's a discussion about the scarcity of dissolves in US movies post-1968. Weinman et al. seem a bit off the mark in terms of timing. (MTV and its all-encompassing 80s stupidity would eventually drive the last nail into that coffin). In the work of 70s American New Wave directors (Coppola, DePalma, Scorsese, Altman, Cimino, Penn, Malick, Robert Benton) there are frequent and sometimes astonishing uses of the effect. (Altman's Thieves Likes Us from '74 seems like one long emerald-toned dissolve.)

In fact, did the 1970s, in terms of thematic and emotional power, give us the greatest dissolve in movie history?

Michael Corleone has lost his father and eldest brother, and is now haunted by memories and images of an imagined past. He has moved his family out of its New York sanctuary to the open mountains of Nevada. His older sister hates and shuns him, because of the murder of her husband, ordered by Michael. He has renounced his older brother Fredo. And he blames his wife for the recent loss of their child.

Michael comes to his own mother, to ask what it's all about.

Nothing But the Marvelous

Missing

Antidote to Chumpsy

Right here.

 

Chumpsky

This product of the High Technology/National Security State has been lying his face off about JFK for decades. (Notice his opening lie -- completely gratuitous -- regarding Kennedy's 1961 "escalation" in South Vietnam.)

But now? Move over Don Lemon, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, and Joy Reid -- a new pimp for the Obama/Biden Dumbo Party has been born. . . .

Through a Glass, Darkly

Not coming to a theater near you. Not streaming anytime soon on Netfliz, Hulu, Amazon Prime, or Showtime. Winner of awards at this past summer's Cannes film festival -- and picked up for showing in more than one-dozen countries -- director Oliver Stone still seeks an American distributor. . .

 

Satan, Make Room for One More

The second most vile House Negro in U.S. history, just beating out Condoleezza Rice (guess who number one is?) has croaked. Forget Iraq I and II, this capitalist gangster was licking Massa's boots by running a cover-up of My Lai back in '68. . .

Burn in hell.

 

"I Emphatically Deny These Charges"

Mr. Rob Clark (The Lone Gunman) with the finest and deepest understanding of Lee Harvey Oswald I know of, in print or audio. Here Clark blows open a door which is usually kept shut by the community, of whatever take. Too many people look at 11/22/63 with a cold eye, despite it being one of the most monstrous acts of the 20th Century. A young man, the most famous and powerful man in the world, seated next to his wife, both of them the parents of two small children, has his head blown off. FROM BEHIND. (So they say.) That is not the act of a nut, of a political ideologue, of a closet homosexual (Norman Mailer tended toward that nitwit interpretation), or of a lovelorn husband. It is the act of a monster. The act of someone capable of child murder, of mass murder, of Auschwitz. Of course, that sort of evil was not too hard to find within the US National Security State, a sort of death-worship which was the daily bread for the likes of Allen Dulles, Dick Helms, David Phillips, James Angleton, Sam Halpern, David Morales, Tracy Barnes, Des FitzGerald and many others. As it is in our own day with the monsters who blow up women and children and wedding parties from within their air-conditioning drone-strike studios somewhere in Virginia or Nebraska or the Oval Office. But where is there any evidence of this sort of psychopathology in the life of Lee Harvey Oswald? Oswald, as Clark details, was never alone. He was a man who loved his family. Loved his wife, however difficult a time she seemed to give him. And who dearly loved his daughters. Baby daughters, the youngest only weeks old when JFK was killed. So Oswald that day was not only killing Kennedy, he was killing himself, and the lives of his children as well, destroying lives that had only just begun. There is NO EVIDENCE he was that sort of man. Mr. Clark reminds us of that in a brilliant, funny, passionate, and unique way.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Oswald.

Komachan

Inside 21st-century U.S. culture, kids are generally seen as knowing and obnoxious schemers, somehow always smarter than the parents, sexualized and made to seem like junior-mint Yuppies about as narcissistic as the grown-ups. One of the remaining beautiful parts of Japan is the respect shown toward children as children. Most books, television, games, toys, anime, and movies are emotionally sophisticated, and the creators expect Japanese children to understand. . .

Komaneko is one of the sweetest and saddest movies/anime I know. And so quiet. Another difference: turn on anything American for kids and there won't be more than a nano-second of silence.

Created by Tsuneo Goda from 2006.

And Oh Yes. . .

Don't forget to check out Meg's current YouTube Channel, Meg's Cozy Tea Time.

Here she hosts a live watch-party, seeing herself in Psycho II (1983) for the first time.

70 Years Ago. . .

NOW!

 

 107!

 

 

p.s. Clayton Kershaw ~ you suck!

Brothers

Two of the greatest Americans of the 20th-century. You'll never see the likes of this again. . .

Who is Stupid? You Decide

Jonathan Issacs:

Some brain-dead vegetable:

Longing

A movie exploring extreme states of consciousness or moments of vision or intense emotion is notoriously difficult for story-based viewers to deal with, since most movie criticism is exclusively "realistic" and story-based in its awareness, only sensitive to social events and interactions among characters, fetishistic at analyzing psychology and motivations and resumes: criticism, in brief, only capable of describing and understanding who said what to whom, why he or she said it, and what the consequences in the plot plausibly should or should not be. The difficulty with all this is that all great movie moments are moments when frequently nothing that matters is happening in those ways, nothing may be going on socially, verbally, or "professionally" that is important. The only event taking place at a given moment may be a derangement in the style or in the tone; the occurrence of an expressive close-up of a figure’s face; or the brightness or quality of light falling on the wall of a room ~ actions or events more momentous than those noticed by the story-fetishists and are obviously not analyzable in terms of psychology, resume, dialogue, or social interaction.

The reality to which these true movie moments pay allegiance is a reality that offers itself as an alternative to the prison of manners, social standing, and political categories as definitions of the individual, or as indications of his or her capacities of performance. These are precisely the moments in which a character or a dramatic situation escapes from being understood in those terms, moments when social or political definitions break down or when an individual is released into another, less limiting relationship to his or her surroundings.

These are the moments or scenes that descriptions of the characters or summaries of the movie story leave out, scenes or fleeting moments when characters simply sit still and are silent; when they look at each other but do not speak; when music swells on the soundtrack, or the rhythm of the editing changes, or a special lighting effect is used, even though nothing is apparently happening in terms of the advancement of the plot or the dialogue spoken. Such moments, when the social situations of the characters or the lines they speak cease to express the meaning of a scene, are often the most important ones in movies, moments when the film is longing to express feelings or visions too intense or private to be expressed in story or social form. . .

Trane at 95

You Don't Know What Love Is

John Coltrane does. Happy Autumn in New York.

Beyond Grace

In many ways, his speech at the United Nations, September 20, 1963, is a more radical moment than was the astonishment of American University, three months before. The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty had been signed and was days away from Senate confirmation. The Civil Rights Bill had been entered into the constipated corrupt halls of Congress; and the March on Washington had been celebrated. Medgar Evers was dead. And children had died: four little girls in Birmingham, Alabama, five days before; and the President's own prematurely born son, Patrick, in August.

Here Kennedy recognizes the State of Grace the world had entered into in 1963, thanks to himself, to Nikita Khrushchev, to Pope John XXIII and other leaders. And how fragile that State was. He calls not for an end to the arms race, but for total worldwide disarmament. He calls for a newly established worldwide food distribution program, one particularly embracing poor children. Calls for the creation of organizations across borders providing health care, farm subsidies and equipment, science education and laboratories, for all in need. New laws and enforcement power preserving the beauties and health of our natural environment. And a new United Nations charter strengthening human and civil rights treaties and courts, proposing new laws and courts should conflicts arise not covered by existing measures.

Most stunning -- and self-destructive -- of all is his call for an end to the space race, for a unified effort to explore the stars, the planets, the moon -- and a ban on all outer space weapons and military-oriented satellites. This, combined with Kennedy's refusal to Americanize the war in Southeast Asia, would have cost the corporate/military/intelligence vampires trillions of dollars.

They wouldn't lose a dime, thanks to the greatest American mass murderer of the 20th Century -- and one of Kennedy's assassins -- Lyndon Johnson.

It is a celebration of hope, community, cooperation, and all we hold dear on our short journey from birth to death. "My fellow inhabitants of this planet. . . ."

How far we have fallen. . .

Burn in Hell

You and your whole WASP devil family.

Forgotten

Happy Anniversary!

To the U.S. War on the World!
Since  9/11, the United States government -- supported by a majority of the U.S. population -- has murdered:

1,000,000 Iraqis

400,000 Afghans

180,000 Syrians

60,000 Pakistanis

260,000 Libyans

8,000 Iranians

48,000 Yemenis

15,000 Somalis

Conservative figures all. And not counting those murdered by U.S. proxies (Israel, Ukraine, Georgia, Mexico, Columbia, Chechnya, the Phillippines, Indonesia). Also not counting "stateless" persons, foreign and domestic -- no doubt in the 100,000s -- who were just in the way or didn't pay the vig on time . . . or who died of broken hearts.

Current score: USA:          over 2,000,000
                        Evil Doers:        2,753

All right!!

Spirit in the Sky

The Soul of Labor (and cigarettes), 1958.

Big 12

Happy Birthday to the blog!

A tender and very human episode of Route 66 from February 15, 1963: "Somehow It Gets to be Tomorrow"

Sure does . . .

Before & After

Betty

"Along Comes Betty": Art Blakey drums, Lee Morgan trumpet, Benny Golson tenor sax, Bobby Timmons piano, Jymie Merritt bass. From '58.

His Honor

Between the time of production's end and the Hearst empire's failed coast-to-coast drive to prevent the release (and the continuing existence) of Citizen Kane (1941), Orson Welles formed The Free Company -- a leftist combine of artists and writers affirming, at a time of reactionary retrenchment and impending war, the basic beliefs in populist democracy. The idea was to illustrate by a series of radio plays the meaning of freedom and particularly those civil and economic rights which make freedom possible.

Welles's contribution, His Honor, the Mayor, was transmitted on April 6, 1941, the month before Kane's tentative premiere. Unlike his other radio work, here Welles's manner is homespun, mild in tone, and all the more telling for its absence of tub-thumping: Welles as narrator insists that "you can draw your own conclusions; I hope you do." He quietly and cunningly builds the dramatic tension by maintaining the evenness of mood. No sooner had the play been broadcast than it was immediately and vehemently denounced in the Hearst press as communist propaganda. The American Legion held meetings to denounce it.

The attacks backfired. This time Hearst and his men had gone too far, succeeding only in arousing public support for Welles and the release of Citizen Kane by methods of vilification transparent even to Hearst's natural supporters, giving backbone to RKO Studio's previously timid board of directors. There would now be four Kane premieres: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. The advertising campaign was immediately mounted, exceeding in extravagance any movie launch that had gone before.

Just the Facts

Afghanistan

Announcement

Willie and the Mick

The very first Home Run Derby, from December of '59.

RN

47 years since he fled the White House, just ahead of the Sheriff, with his pockets full of silverware.

Oliver Stone, Senator George McGovern, and historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. on the man who, in Hunter S. Thompson's words, "broke the heart of the American Dream."

What the Summer of '63 Was Really Like

Thank you, Del Tenney -- Master of the Zoom!

Happy 60th, Pigfucker

Posted 10 years ago on the Wall Street pimp's 50th. Wouldn't change a word.

In January 2011, the country is now further to the right than at any time in its history, with a more debased political culture than ever before. More corporatized, with a completely hijacked State. There is more police power, private and public. Less personal and family privacy. Less freedom of movement -- physically, artistically, politically, and especially in terms of work. The connection between what people vote for and what they get is now absolutely delinked. Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex" -- a complex he allowed to be created by turning over national security policy to the Dulles brothers and a complex that would murder his successor -- is now a military-corporate-intelligence state in control of everything. Bush's wars have metastasized -- while staying exactly the same in effect in Iraq -- into a massive expansion in Afghanistan, a massive expansion covertly in Iran, Indonesia, and Columbia (with the heroic populist governments of Central and South America now in Robert Gates's [Leon Panetta's] drone-sights), and new wars in Pakistan and Yemen. Not one perp from the Bush/Cheney crime gang has been gone after. Obama has claimed the right to murder anyone, at anytime, for any reason, anywhere on the planet. There is less control than ever over the gangster state of Israel. The people of Palestine and Gaza are forgotten. As are the poor, desperate, and homeless here in America. NAFTA and GATT have been expanded and hardened rather than reversed. Cap-and-trade was allowed to be hijacked by Goldman Sachs et al. - then killed. The BP/Gulf horror was not used to shift the country away from energy over-development toward conservation. Obama's Justice Department has Godfathered the public crucifixion of whistle blowers and true public servants such as Julian Assange (while setting Assange up for eventual extradition and Gitmo-ing), while also rewriting rules for use of Miranda warnings. There have been FBI raids on the homes and offices of anti-war activists. The criminal enterprise known as the Pharmaceutical/ Insurance/Healthcare "industry" is now more powerful, corrupt, incompetent, and privatized than ever before. The last great industrial union -- Walter Reuther's UAW -- was destroyed by Obama and his henchmen by means which would've made Ronald Reagan blush. Most state and local governments are bankrupt, and abandoned. All public service unions are now on the run in America's new form of McCarthyism. Obama has set us up for the coup de grâce: the Neo-Feudal dismantling of all public and egalitarian struggles and accomplishments of the past 150 years. Checkmate.

But who'd a-thunk in the following six months, he would:

Support Mubarak.

Murder thousands of Pakistani and Afghan civilians by the perfect Obamian murder weapon -- a computer-controlled drone strike.

Launch aggressive war against Somalia.

Launch aggressive war against Libya.

Embrace the mob-family dictatorship in Bahrain.

Push for the largest defense increase in world history, while bleating about "austerity" and "shared sacrifice": restrained -- by House Republicans.

Appoint Reichsmarschall David von Petraeus as CIA Director, eliminating the fail-safe wall between civilian intelligence and military action.

Let Bibi Netanyahu publicly cornhole him on the White House lawn. (And when Bibi was done, Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon took over.)

Nationally celebrate the murder of an unarmed old man by dozens of PCP addicts, in the presence of his wife and children.

Nationally celebrate the murder of Moamar Gadafy's son and three grandchildren, in one of hundreds of assassination attempts against Gadafy himself. (Who as of January 2011 was still on the US Good Guy list.)

Stick a shiv in Elizabeth Warren's back ~ instead appointing a male dishrag. (The shiv to Warren being in the classic tradition: Jeremiah Wright and the Trinity Baptist Church, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, David Patterson, ACORN, Van Jones, Charles Bolden, Shirley Sherrod, etc.)

Prevent Holder and the Justice Department from pursuing Murdoch and the NewsCorp scandal.

And wind-up LEADING the corporate totalitarian destruction of what was left of public policy, public social concern, public investigations, public education, magnanimity, forbearance, gentleness, mercy, protection of the weak; and pushing the Republican Party further than it ever hoped to go -- instead of fighting it.

Swept in on a wave of populist energy and hope, this designer Judas has led the most vicious assault on the poor and powerless in US history -- a Judas who clearly views any kind of politics save the politics of corrupt privilege as sentimental rot. So here's hoping you and your Mutant Elite supporters choke on the black truffle sandwiches and butterfly pasta with squid at one of your many birthday celebrations tonight, you slick and slimy cocksucker.

Cuba si! Yanqui no!

Fred Reed says it.

Love Crazy

At first glance, 1950's Gun Crazy is a mere re-telling of the 1930s Bonnie and Clyde myth, following up on Nick Ray's They Live by Night from the year before and Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once (1937). At heart though, Gun Crazy is one of the most deliriously romantic films ever made.

A young man and young woman are obsessed with guns, and both can shoot out the eye of an eagle at 100 yards. When they first meet, what else can they do but fall in love? Since everything around them in straight society means to rip them apart and put them in their place, they do all they can across the landscape of post-World War II America to make their love burn ever brighter.

Peggy Cummins is the soul and guts of the film, always stoking the flames, director Joseph Lewis making prominent the delicate silvery cut of her face (while eventually betraying her): that delicate girl face below the blonde hair. Love must murder us unless we possess it altogether, is the look she gives us. And yet she has a fear of the man she is in love with, for she senses that his words and gestures, perhaps those she could possess. But him, his private substance — she would never have it, and so her eyes often shudder.

At the end, she is proved correct.

Hot!

As stupid and pointless as is summer in New York City. Still. . . a favorite.

Aching

I'd always thought (after many viewings) that Hitchcock's astonishing shift from James Stewart's POV to Kim Novak's begins with Judy's look into the camera and her writing ~ then tearing up ~ a confession letter to Scottie, almost 100 minutes into the movie. . .

No, Vertigo is pregnant with her tenderness and sorrow from the start. Perhaps the whole work is born from her fatal descent off the bell-tower, looking back. For how could something like this come from a man as hard-headed, humorless, cold, prosaic, and contemptuous of women (Madeleine at first, Midge, Ellen Corby at the McKittrick) as is the ex-detective?

More Chunk...

 

Chunk Redux

"A liberal is a lackey looking for someone's boots to polish."

-- Dostoevsky

 

 The great Glenn Greenwald.

 

Star Crossed Lovers

US

Who Done It?

 

 

Now of course we know (see above), but back then it was not so clear. An historic conference from 1975 including nothing but Hall of Famers.

The Chunk etc.

 

Over the past decade, there've been many grifters and shills pretending to be anti-capitalist, anti-war forces, merely to distract the office zombies and Woke rubes from how they actually live their lives each day; how they actually feel about and treat other human beings. . .

 

Of course, the worst of these "forces" has been that fashionista blob of irrelevance known as The Young Turds, led by lead turd Chunk Useless. Lately, the YT mask has slipped as both ad revenue and viewership tanks; and as they are going down for the count, YT has taken on smearing genuine anti-corporate rebels such as Jimmy Dore, Aaron Maté, Tulsi Gabbard, Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald, George Galloway, Crystal Ball, and Roger Waters.

Peter Lavelle and George Szamuely:

 

Going On 50

Last month marked the 50th Anniversary of Marvin Gaye's incomparable What's Going On. James Vega with a beautiful tribute.

Straight on Syria

Aaron Maté, Ben Norton, Max Blumenthal, and the great Iranian scholar Professor Mohammad Marandi.

John Lewis Knew. . .

You really want to know what Bob Kennedy was?

He was fucking beautiful. -- AP reporter Joe Mohbat

Loved and Needed

His greatest speech, the morning after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Lion Heart

Robert Francis Kennedy running for United States Senate, before the students of Columbia University, September 1964.



(Please forgive the "public domain" imprint.)

Victory!

The Saker:

Just like in 2006, when both Ehud Olmert and George Bush declared that the “invincible IDF” had, yet again, achieved a “glorious victory” and the entire Middle-East almost died laughing hearing this ridiculous claim, today both the US and Israeli propaganda machine have declared another “glorious” victory for the “Jewish state of Israel” cum “sole democracy in the Middle-East”. And, just like in 2006, everybody in the region (and in Zone B) knows that the truth is that the Zionist entity suffered a huge, humiliated, defeat. Let’s try to unpack this.

First, a few numbers. The combat operations lasted two weeks. All other missile numbers are in dispute. Rather than trust this or that source, I will simply say that Hamas fired many thousands of missiles into Israel. Some, probably less than 50%, were truly intercepted by the Israeli air defenses, others hit in no man’s land, and some actually landed and caused plenty of destruction and at least 12 deaths. The Israelis executed hundreds of artillery and airstrikes causing massive destruction in the Gaza strip and killing about 250 Palestinians. Again, these numbers are guesstimates and they don’t really tell the full story. To understand the story, we need to forget about these numbers and look at what each side was hoping for and what each side achieved. Let’s begin with the Israelis:

The Israeli scorecard

To understand Israel’s goals in this war, we first need to place this latest war in its context, and that context is that Israel was comprehensively defeated in Syria. To substantiate this thesis, let’s remember the goals of the Zionists when they unleashed a major international war against Syria. These objectives, as listed in my July 2019 article “Debunking the Rumors About Russia Caving in to Israel” were:

The initial AngloZionist plan was to overthrow Assad and replace him with the Takfiri crazies (Daesh, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, ISIS – call them whatever you want). Doing this would achieve the following goals:

1. Bring down a strong secular Arab state along with its political structure, armed forces, and security services.
2. Create total chaos and horror in Syria justifying the creation of a “security zone” by Israel not only in the Golan but further north.
3. Trigger a civil war in Lebanon by unleashing the Takfiri crazies against Hezbollah.
4. Let the Takfiris and Hezbollah bleed each other to death, then create a “security zone,” but this time in Lebanon.
5. Prevent the creation of a Shia axis Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon.
6. Break up Syria along ethnic and religious lines.
7. Create a Kurdistan which could then be used against Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
8. Make it possible for Israel to become the uncontested power broker in the Middle-East and force the KSA, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and all others to have to go to Israel for any gas or oil pipeline project.
9. Gradually isolate, threaten, subvert, and eventually attack Iran with a broad regional coalition of forces.
10. Eliminate all centers of Shia power in the Middle-East.

As we all know, this is what actually happened:

1. The Syrian state has survived, and its armed and security forces are now far more capable than they were before the war started (remember how they *almost* lost the war initially? The Syrians bounced back while learning some very hard lessons. By all reports, they improved tremendously, while at critical moments Iran and Hezbollah were literally “plugging holes” in the Syrian frontlines and “extinguishing fires” on local flashpoints. Now the Syrians are doing a very good job of liberating large chunks of their country, including every single city in Syria).
2. Not only is Syria stronger, but the Iranians and Hezbollah are all over the country now, which is driving the Israelis into a state of panic and rage.
3. Lebanon is rock solid; even the latest Saudi attempt to kidnap Hariri is backfiring. (2021 update: in spite of the explosion in Beirut, Hezbollah is still in charge)
4. Syria will remain unitary, and Kurdistan is not happening. Millions of displaced refugees are returning home.
5. Israel and the US look like total idiots and, even worse, as losers with no credibility left.

Seeing their defeat in Syria, the Zionists did what they always do: they used their propaganda machine to list an apparently neverending victorious strikes on supposed “Iranian targets” in Syria. While a few civilian simpletons with zero military experience did buy into this nonsense, the truth about Israeli operations in Syria is simple: the Syrian air defenses have successfully prevented the Israelis from striking at important, sensitive, targets, and they Israelis have been forced to declare as major victories the destruction of empty barns as “destruction of important IRGC headquarters” thereby “proving” to a few naive folks in Zone A and to themselves (!) that the IDF is still as “invincible” as it “always was”. As for the Neocons, they doubled-up on that and declared that 1) Russian air defenses are useless 2) that Russia and Israel work hand in hand and 3) that the Israelis are still invincible. Yet if any of that was true, why has Israel failed to achieve a single one of its goals? And why are both the Russians and the Iranians still in Syria were the Russians just finished a 2nd runway at Khmeimim and they have just deployed a group of Tu-22M3 at that air base from where they can now threaten any ship sailing in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. In their otherwise “free time” they can deliver tons of bombs and missiles to the remaining Takfiri forces in Syria.

As I have been saying for many years now, the truth is that the IDF is a poor fighting force. Why? First, they have the exact same problem as the USA (and the KSA, for that matter): they rely on expensive technology, but don’t have good combat-capable “boots on the ground”. That is now how modern wars are won (see here for a list of popular misconceptions about modern wars).

In its recent history, the entire gamut of Israeli “elite” forces (including the air force, the navy, the artillery and even the Golani Brigade) got its collective butt handed to them by about 1000 and only lightly armed regular Hezbollah fighters in 2006: keep in mind that the elite Hezbollah forces were deployed only north of the Litani river to protect Beirut against a possible land invasion by Israel. Instead of taking Beirut or “disarming Hezbollah” (that was an official goal!), the Israelis could not even control the small town of Bint Jbeil located right across the official Israeli border! So much for being “invincible”!

What the IDF is very experienced at is terrorizing Palestinian civilians and executing what could be called a slow-motion genocide of the Palestinian people. The problem with Gaza now is the same that the failed invasion of Lebanon in 2006 has revealed: just like the Lebanese in 2006, the Palestinians of 2021 are not afraid of the Zionists anymore. Furthermore, with a great deal of help from Iran and others, Hamas in Gaza is now much, much better armed than in the past. True, some of its missiles are decidedly low tech and not very effective (low accuracy, small warheads, simple trajectory, limited range), but Hamas also has shown some pretty decent UAVs too. Most importantly, from now on for Hamas it is only one way: up the “quality ladder” (just like the Houthis did in Yemen, starting with modest drones but eventually getting very capable ones).

The other major goal of the Israelis in this war was to prove to the world (and, even more importantly for the always narcissistic self-worshiping Israeli cowards, to themselves!) that their “Iron Dome” air defense network was the “super-dooper most bestest” in the world (no doubt, due to the famed “Jewish genius”!). It now appears that at best, the Israelis intercepted somewhere around 30-40% of the Hamas missiles. The way the Israeli hid this is by claiming that their fancy shmancy Iron Drone did not even try to engage missiles which were not deemed dangerous. But in the age of the ubiquitous smartphone, that kind of silly nonsense can easily be debunked (including by showing the total chaos in the Israeli skies or, for that matter, the missile strikes on Israeli military objectives). While the full Iron Dome air defense system probably works marginally better than the quasi-useless US Patriot, the Israeli air defenses are clearly at least a generation behind the Russian ones, including the S-300s the Russians sold to Syria (again, in the age of of the ubiquitous smartphone, this is not hard to prove).

It is crucial to remember that Hamas’ missiles are much inferior to those of the Houthis and the Syrians, and even more inferior when compared to Hezbollah or Iranian drones and missiles! In other words, the “invincible” IDF can’t deal with even its weakest, least sophisticated enemies (Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad) and the grotesquely expensive Iron Done cannot protect the Zionists from any determined missile attacks by the Resistance coalition (Palestine, Yemen, Syria, Hezbollah, Iran and Russia).

In their utter despair, the Zionist entity did what the AngloZionists always do when they fail to defeat a military forces: they will turn their wrath on the civilian infrastructure and murder as many as they can. They will also strike highly symbolic targets such as the International Press Center in Gaza or a Red Crescent hospital (under the pretext that Hamas, which is the democratically elected local government) has offices there (this is clearly a F-you to those who condemn Israel for violating international law). To a normal human being, this sounds both obscene and ridiculous. But remember, the Israelis are first and foremost narcissists and they have no means of imagining how normal human beings think or feel. All these guys can feel is self-worship and hatred for all “others”.

We could say that in this war, the Palestinians defeated both military high tech and truly medieval type of genocidal hatred.

In other words, far from showing how “invincible” the Zionist entity is, this latest war against the Palestinians has shown beyond reasonable doubt that the IDF cannot deal with any of its enemies.

Besides missiles and bombs, the Israelis love to use terror, as their ideology has convinced them of two things: the Arabs only understand force and we, the Israelis, are invincible. But this begs the question of why the Israelis did not dare to move into Gaza, not even symbolically. Yeah, I know, the official doxa of Zone A is that “Biden called Netanyahu and told him to stop”. As if “Biden” could give orders to the Israelis!

The truth is that even with a casualty rate of 10:1 in the IDF’s advantage and no armor or artillery, the Palestinians are much more willing to engage in street battles than the IDF. Would the IDF eventually win a ground battle against Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad? Maybe, probably, the objective advantages in everything (except courage!) for the Israelis is so huge that no amount of skills and courage can forever negate the immense superiority in means of the Israelis.

However, as most people in the West tend to forget, wars are but means towards a political goal. If the IDF decided to basically flatten Gaza and kill many thousands of Palestinians at the cost of casualties probably in the hundreds, then this would be politically suicidal for the Zionist regime. This is why I offer this very basic conclusion:

During the latest Gaza war, deterrence did work. But only in the sense that the Palestinians successfully deterred the Israelis from launching a ground attack against Gaza.

There is another crucial political development which should also be noted: while both Iran and Hezbollah did give their full political support to Hamas+Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the latter did not request any assistance. In other words, not only did the Palestinians defeat the Israelis, but they did so absolutely alone, with no help from the other Resistance members.

Again, those Zone A civilians who believe that Israel is scoring huge victories in Syria on a quasi daily basis won’t get it, which is par for the course. But you can be darn sure that at least most of the IDF top commanders know the true score and for them it is yet another huge disaster.

There is also a political factor to consider. While there have been coordination resistance actions by the Palestinians in Israel (proper, as defined by the UN), this is the first time when the Palestinians from Gaza, those from the Occupied Territories and those in “Israel” truly fought, if not side by side (yet!), then at least at the same time and in a common cause. This is a major political victory for Hamas+Palestinian Islamic Jihad and a major problem for Fatah and the Zionists. Now let’s look at the rest of the Palestinian scorecard:

The Palestinian scorecard:

Let’s start by the obvious one: the Palestinians were not defeated. This victory can be further subdivided in the following:

• The Palestinian leadership has mostly physically survived, it still exists as a local authority. Plenty of Palestinians were murdered, but that did not affect the operational capabilities of the Palestinian forces (any more than the IDF succeeded in affecting Iranian operational capabilities in Syria).
• The Palestinian leadership has also survived politically. It was not blamed by the “Palestinian street” for starting the war, nor was it blamed for how it executed it. As for Fatah, it is now, by all accounts, lost somewhere in a political no man’s land which, admittedly, it richly deserves for its incompetence, corruption and subservience to Israel and the USA.
• Militarily speaking, the Palestinian missile strikes were not nearly as effective than, say, Hezbollah (nevermind Iranian!) strikes would have been, but, hey, they made huge progress and we can all rest assured that the Palestinians of Gaza will, sooner or later, catch up with the Houthis and, further down the road, maybe even Hezbollah.
• By many accounts, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have made major political inroads into the Palestinian political scene outside Gaza. Even in spite of a truly immense hasbara effort by the Israelis, the international public opinion was blaming Israel for the orgy of violence.

It is interesting to note here that the famous Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has written an article for Ha’aretz entitled “Israeli Propaganda Isn’t Fooling Anyone – Except Israelis” which was further subtitled “’Hasbara’ is the Israeli euphemism for propaganda, and there are some things, said the late ambassador Yohanan Meroz, that are not ‘hasbarable.’ One of them is Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.” This is how Levy’s article began:

And propaganda shall cover for everything. We’ll say terrorism, we’ll shout anti-Semitism, we’ll scream delegitimation, we’ll cite the Holocaust; we’ll say Jewish state, gay-friendly, drip irrigation, cherry tomatoes, aid to Nepal, Nobel Prizes for Jews, look what’s happening in Syria, the only democracy, the greatest army. We’ll say the Palestinians are making unilateral moves, we’ll propose negotiations on the “settlement bloc borders,” we’ll demand recognition of a Jewish state and we’ll complain that “there’s no one to talk to.” We’ll wail that the whole world is against us and wants to destroy us, no less.

Now comes the best part: Levy wrote this on Jun. 4, 2015 and updated it on Apr. 10, 2018 – years before the current disaster! Since then, things have only gone south for the IDF and the Israelis in general. Just the blowback from the war in Syria is, for the IDF, a true disaster.

Of course, “Israel” is still worshipped and faithfully served by many ruling classes worldwide (that is one of the functions of the Empire, to enforce this), but that officially lauded Israel is viewed with disgust and revulsion on most of the planet. Hence the inevitable failure of the truly galactic PR effort to brainwash the regular people into believing that Israeli is a polyyanish country, a “place without people for a people without country”, etc. etc. etc. This “Ziolatry”, if you wish, was effective when the PLO was blowing up Jewish grade schools in Western Europe, but today it has lost almost all of its traction, especially amongst thinking people.

The sad and disgusting reality about the Zionist entity is truly coming out, seeping under the propaganda walls of the Empire, and slowly but inevitably resulting in a common reaction of outrage and utter disgust for what is nothing else but the last officially racist country on the planet, the only country with an open air concentration camp it surrounds on all sides, the only country which truly, openly and sincerely does not give a damn about international law or about the lives of non-Jews (while calling their own lives sacred, of course!). This is a state which constantly repeats the mantra about the supposedly “sacred” blood of Jews while, at the same time, committing a slow motion (but very real) genocide of the Palestinian people while using non-stop terrorist attacks against any country daring to defy the order of the latest, and hopefully last, wannabe “superior race” in human history. This is also why the “crime of crimes” for politically correct and successfully brainwashed people is to declare that Israel has no right to exist. This is such a major crimethink that I want to conclude by committing it right now and asking others to join me in this “crimethink”!

Israel has no right to exist whatsoever first and foremost because it is an artificial creation of West European imperialist powers. Second, it is a country which has always engaged in atrocities and massive violations of international laws and norms. Instead, Israel is based on a racist ideology which is, for all practical purpose, indistinguishable from Hitler’s Nazi ideology (both National Socialism and Zionism have the same roots in both time, space and culture, both being products of European secularism and nationalism). For these reasons, Israel, and the Zionist ideology which supports it, are both a clear and present danger for international peace and stability (for details on Zionism as an ideology and its toxicity, please see here). Furthermore, the only possibly way for the Palestinian people to ever recover their land and their rights under international law is for the Zionist “regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time” (to quote the often mistranslated sentence by Ayatollah Komenei). By the way, this awareness also presupposes a clear understanding that the so-called “Two State Solution” (2SS) is an impossibility. Yes, I know, the 2SS is currently the only one under international law, but that is hardly surprising since the state of Israel was created with not only many of the trappings of “being an internationally recognized state” but also with the shameful complicity of the country which won WWII. There is one thing which Israel has in common with the so-called “Republic of Kosovo”: they will be the very first to be liberated as soon as the AngloZionist Empire finally crashes visibly (of course, it has already crashed, hence the many disastrous outcomes for the USA and Israel on the international scene, but that is still denied officially in Zone A and,of course, by the AngloZionist propaganda and those who pay attention to it.

In truth, there is only one true “solution” to this war: the so-called “One State Solution”, meaning that those who live in this land will get to choose their leaders and lifestyles according to the old “one person, one vote” principle. All other “solutions” simply perpetuate the current genocide!

As for those Jews who still want an ethnically pure state of Israel, they can either grow up and get real, or they can choose to colonize some other planet. As long as they don’t persecute local lifeforms, that might work. But if they do this will all happen again, over and over.

Conclusion: “Gaza” and the future of the Zionist entity

I want to end here with what I believe is a glance at the future (or lack thereof!) of Israel. The website Islamic World News Analysis Group (which I highly recommend!) recently posted what it claims to be a video of a new Iranian combat drone named “Gaza” described as so: “The Gaza drone, capable of carrying 13 bombs and 500 kilograms of equipment, as well as 35 hours of flight up to a radius of 2,000 kilometers, is capable of carrying out a variety of combat and intelligence operations. According to the published images, it seems that the Gaza drone uses the Rotary Bomb Launcher mechanism under its fuselage, which can carry up to 5 bombs. This is the first Iranian drone to use this mechanism. 8 bombs are also installed under the wings and in total this drone is capable of carrying 13 bombs”. Here is the footage of this new drone. Take a look for yourself and imagine what the next round of this campaign to liberate Palestine might look like.