Look Around You

An episode from the British Series, Look Around You.
There will be a test.

The Limbaugh Memorial Barbeque

On Thursday, I humbly submitted my unabashed endorsement of RUSH LIMBAUGH to the elevation as Pope of the Republican Party and that he has deemed to choose Mike Steele as his assistant. I believe he is the man who can lead the Republicans through their dark journey through the night of their exile from the glory they know they are entitled to.
Today, I'd like to host a Rush Limbaugh Memorial Barbeque and suggest a recipe that he might enjoy. If I were him though, I'd try to control my Viagra intake for a few hours before this savory celebration of pork was on the table. Remember, Mr. Limbaugh, eat only one at a time, I think the calorie estimate is about 30,000 per serving.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, the Rush Limbaugh Memorial Bacon Explosion.
This was your White Trash Moment of the Week.

The Man Who Had Too Many Ideas.....

Yesterday around 2,500,000 demonstrating people were in the streets of cities and towns across France. That works out to roughly 4% of the population and 76% were sympathetic to the strike. Crowd size in Paris alone is estimated at up to 300,000.
Now if this same percentage was ever achieved in the United States, that would make almost 13,000,000 people, but America, rest assured, you could never get that many people to agree to go out and demonstrate no matter what the reason.
In the cities near me, Brive la Gaillarde there were 10,000, 25,000 in Limoges and 8,000 in Perigueux.

The goverment was releasing numbers much, much lower but today, the numbers I am quoting are the ones being reported on all of the media.
This was the biggest demonstration that Paris has seen in 20 years and in many parts of France it was the biggest social protest since May 1968, when DeGaulles government was brought down in the streets.

Earlier this week, there was a vote to censure the Sarkozy Government which if it had succeeded, would have forced the dissolution of the UMP majority. It did fail, but it was a strong slap.

The protests are being referred in the foreign press as the result of French unease over the economic situation. That is the simple line. This was a message to a government that has beat the drum of constant "reform". Reform, unfortunately has become a code word for cutting funds to and removing social programs, destroying the educational system, disenfranchising the legal system, cutting radically and raising the fees of the socialized medical system, raising taxes and fees while rewarding coorporations and trying to denationalize much of the infrastructure. One of the most threatened groups is the trade unions.

There has been a long trail littered with broken promises to the French population.
Meanwhile, the government has been actively passing laws which are restricting the rights of everyone. There are quotas on deportations of illegal immigrants that have to be met resulting in many lines of simple common sense being crossed. This alone has caused actual human rights abuses being investigated by Amnesty International.

One of the last straws was 2 weeks ago when the President was visiting northern France to try to push his educational "reforms". He visited an school and outside, there was a massive demonstration by parents and teachers which was messily broken up by the police and garnered enough publicity to make national news in a big way.
Sarkozy, in a fury, fired the Prefect of the Departement and the chief of police for allowing this embarrassment.

The government has hired a PR firm to feed news to the foreign press. It gives the impression that Sarkozy is a classy guy with an exmodel/pop singing wife, running an efficient government and makes sure there are photo ops constantly available to prove that he is actually "saving the world".
France sees the real picture.
A little man desparately reaching for total control, running from one failed idea to another in the attempt to hide the previous days debacle.

Alan A Dale

thebrainpolice is technically still on strike, but to keep you entertained while we experience this break in our normal programming, here is an excerpt from the classic 1960s BBC TV comedy series 'Not Only But Also'. At about 1:19 in, after the caveman sketch, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sing a 'ballad' about Robin Hood's fabled sidekick Alan A Dale. This episode was shot in 1965.

This regarding the strike: I watched on CNN as the reportage gave the numbers of people in the streets. They implied that it was less than 100,000 and that the strike was not successful. The Sarko government spents 60 million Euros a year on Public Relations to give the impression in the foreign press that he is doiing something and all is well here. It seems to be money well spent as far as CNN goes, because the real numbers as of an hour ago, was 2.5 million people in the streets of the cities of France protesting the economic and social policies of this government. I hope to have some good pictures and video tomorrow.

Republican Pope!

Rarely has thebrianpolice ever gone as far as actually endorsing a person for job, but we have to concur, this is a rare opportunity. Now is the time for the Republican Party to kneel in abject obesiance and humility before the one man who is most qualified to lead them. A man not only qualified to lead them straight into the middle ages where they long to be, but a man who would be pope! I, microdot, heartily endorse and urge the poobahs of the Republican Party to acknowlege the man who is destined to be raised to the utmost of conservative poobah-ship, the next Grand Wazoo, the next, I wipe a salty tear from my eye in emotion, yes, the next fucking pope of the Republican Party,
RUSH LIMBAUGH!

LA GREVE A COMMENCER!

Ce soir, thebrainpolice se joint à la solidarité avec le reste de la France à une grève générale! Si vous avez besoin d'aide, notre funtionaries sont sur un horaire limité, de sorte que vous mai ont une longue attente. Pour vous aider à passer le temps, notre équipe a fourni une version condensée de la dernière semaine de télévision de l'émission de télévision, Groland. Je suis un citoyen de l'Republique de Groland et dans cet épisode, vous pourrez rencontrer à la fois le président et le pape de Groland et d'apprendre de nos religions sainte signe.
PLEASE STAND BY......
an operator might be available to assist you. someday...possibly

The Doubtful Guest

In 1976, the American Composer, Michael Mantler collaborated with writer/illustrator Edward Gorey to produce an orchestrated version of some of Gorey's tales from his anthology, Amphigorey. The result was a record called, The Hapless Child. The Hapless Child unfortunately seems to have been discontinued and not available, but it is a unique body of music that still holds up in a timeless fashion. It was a complexly rich mixture of big band, avant classicism, jazz and rock. The guitarist was the Swedish jazz/rock artist, Terje Rypdal, one of my favorite players of all time, I believe Jack DeJohnette played drums, Mantlers wife at the time, the great composer Carla Bley played keyboards, Steve Swallow was the bassist and the ethereally tragic voice of Robert Wyatt sang the lyrics. It was an incredible collection and perhaps never performed live. At the time, it was one of my favorite records.
In 1987 at the International Avant Arts Festival in Munich, Mantler had a series of concerts recreating the music and I am not sure of the musicians, but Jack Bruce, the great Jazz/Rock/Blues bassist and avant gardist in his own right sang the pieces. Jack had collabvorated with Mantler on the stark orchestration of the Beckett play, No Answer in the early 70's and had worked with both Mantler and Bley on many other projects. In this series is a very good performance of No Answer which I may post later. No Answer is still available as an import.
This was recently posted on YouTube and this is great modern American music you need to hear!

SHAKE THE DEVIL OFF!

Yesterday, in my last post about the way the Catholic Church is engaging in self destructive behaviour, I mentioned the struggle of the Parish of St. Augustine in New Orleans. I was made aware of the events there by the award winning documentary, Shake The Devil Off, by Swiss Director, Peter Entell which I saw on the German/French network, ARTE on Sunday night.

It told the story of the Parish which had existed for almost 200 years, originally a church for the wealthy. The slaves were allowed to sit outside and there is a famous slave cemetery in back of the church.

Over the years since the Civil War, the church became a bastion of creole culture and had evolved services which reflected the cultural heritage of Jazz and Gospel.
The spititual leader of the church for the last 30 years had been Pastor Jerome Le Doux, a handsome charismatic man who during and after Hurricane Katrina rises to heroic proportions as he struggles to keep the faith and the bodies of his parishioers fed.
Meanwhile, as the St. Augustine struggles with the day to day problems of the poor and their needs, the arch diocese of New Orleans has decided that because so many of the parishioners have been "displaced" from this valuable piece of real estate, they can assert their control and suppress the unique culture that emanates from the souls of St. Augustine.

The film focuses on the battle by the parishioners to keep their church and their pastor. Pere Le Doux is shown as the real performer he is and the spiritual lion he must be to calmly navigate the tricky waters of ecclesiastical protocol and out and out greed.
He emerges as a fierce but gentle, wise human who knows the limits and the role he must play in this drama.

The film is full of great music, the Marsalis family plays at the church and there are many great performances from members of the church and local New Orleans supporters.
I would most heartily recommend this film to anyone who believes in the power of the human spirit.
The ending may not be what you want, but the energy of this film is uplifting.
The politics and manipulation go a long way to explain what happened and is continuing to unfold in New Orleans with the deliberate dispersal of the real culture!

The above film is a performance of a Gospel Mass by Pere Jerome, last year in New Orleans, not in St. Augustine Church. Here he is perhaps 78 years old and beginning to be a little tired from the struggle. Go to the website for the film and check it out!

Maybe I Don' Wanna Be In This Club.....

This comes, 48 hours after the Vatican lectured Obama about ethics and arrogance? For a pope who was himself a member of the Hitler Youth, this will only feed concerns that perhaps this particular Prada-wearing German is a bit too close to his own Nazi past.

Benedict yesterday welcomed back into the Roman Catholic Church Richard Williamson and three other men who were excommunicated in 1988 after being ordained without Vatican permission. The three had been appointed by breakaway French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The Vatican decree issued yesterday spoke of overcoming the "scandal of divisiveness" and seeking reconciliation with Lefebvre's conservative order, the Society of Saint Pius X, which opposes the modernisation of Catholic doctrine.

But Jewish groups have warned the Pope that the decision could damage Catholic-Jewish relations after Williamson claimed in an interview, broadcast last week, that historical evidence "is hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler ... I believe there were no gas chambers"....

In an interview taped last November and aired last Wednesday on Swedish television, Williamson said he agreed with the "most serious" revisionist historians of the second world war who had concluded that "between 200,000-300,000 perished in Nazi concentration camps, but not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber".

For a major religion hemmoraging members and crediblity worldwide, this seems to be just another nail in its coffin. When the pope's policy is harsher against gays than holocaust deniers, or pedophiles for that matter, where do you go from there?
The church has already shown it is more intersted in real estate than the members of its poor parishes. Witness the treatment of the poor black congregation of St. Augustine Parish in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The Archdiocese saw valuable real estate and a chance to turn the Church into a tourist shrine. So, the church did everything in its power to extinguish the unique character of their church and stop the social services the parish provided. They won, the parishoners lost.

Poetry

Today is a day of being thankful that I have electricity and internet as many of the villages around me are going to be down for a few days because of the massive storm that ripped through this part of France and Spain.
Not much damage here, but down the road, a neighbor lost his roof and we've been helping him get some kind of emergency cover. It took off like a sail and blew up the side of the hill onto the road.
So, I am posting some poetry by my personal poet laureate, the great Percival Dovetonsils in thanksgiving. In case you haven't noticed, I am one of Ernie Kovacs greatest admirers.
I think Percy had a few martinis before the reading, and maybe the next one will have an azalea bush instead of a daisy in it.....

Greetings From Gitmo!

Ohio Republican Representative and House Minority Leader, John Boehner expressed his disappointment at President Obama's signing of the order to close The Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, or "Club Gitmo" as trendy Republican Representatives in the know, call it.

At a press conference today, Boehner rejected the notion that Guantanamo had given the United States a black eye. To Boehner, the accommodations at Gitmo are figuratively, if not literally, to die for:

"I don't know that there's a terrorist treated better anywhere in the world than what has happened at Guantanamo. It is - we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build a facility that has more comforts than a lot of Americans get."

That sound bite made its first appearance in June 2005 in the wake of revelations regarding the torture of Gitmo prisoner Mohammed al-Qahtani. On June 12, Time published details of an 84-page document spelling out the abuse of Qahtani, treatment including sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, which left him in a "life-threatening condition." The result, as Americans learned last week from military commission chief Susan Crawford, is that Qahtani's case could not be referred for prosecution because, "his treatment met the legal definition of torture."

The abuse of Qahtani, however, did not meet the Republican definition of torture. As John Boehner, Dick Cheney, Duncan Hunter, Mel Martinez and Mike Huckabee alike attest, Gitmo is more beach resort than detention center.

The Medieval Mind

South Carolina Republican State Senator Robert Ford is hoping to outlaw lewd language and is pushing for a bill that would prohibit profanity.

Under the pre-filed bill, profanity could land you in jail for up to 5 years and/or cost you up to $5,000 in fines.

Which words are exactly considered profane is still unclear, but the bill does have a list of qualifications for profanity including words or actions that are lewd, vulgar or indecent in nature.

More over, will the bill cover where it might be permissable to use profanity if the bill could actually define profanity?

Would the bill exempt the now ex president, Dick Cheney? Because if the bill was in fact enforcible, he would be a known repeat offender and have to be at least monitored, or would he be a "three strikes and your out" lifer? Would it exempt all the people swearing in disbelief that some dumbfuck could waste their tax dollars by being paid to come up with something as fucking stupid as this?

The Moose Joke

So, I'm trying to finish a photoshop piece and I'm down to the last few details, flashy lettering, flipping photos, the works and the electricity goes out! And stays out for 6 hours! Too be fair, we had a big storm here today with 80 mph wind gusts...I lost some slate tiles off of the barn roof....
So when the power comes on about an hour and half ago...my photoshop piece is gone for good! I was furious, so furious that I just had to post this Woody Allen stand up routine from 1965. The Moose Joke.

99 and 1/2

99 and 1/2 by Mavis Staples from her 2007 cd We'll Never Turn Back produced by Ry Cooder. The footage is from the 2007 May Day March in Los Angeles.
Mavis Staples is one of the artists who can always move me on an emotional level. This woman lived the Civil Rights Movement. The Staples Singers were always there singing at the forefront. On the cd, Mavis weaves an autobiographical quilt of her life embroidered with the movers and the real moments of the struggle.
The footage from 2007 is almost 50 years after the struggles in the south, the violence in the north and the hard held and fought for progress America has made.
Yesterday, we inaugarated Barack Obama and many people feel that this somehow proves that racism is banished from the psyche of America.
It proves that we have progressed and have gone far as a society, but it ain't 100% and let me tell you, when it comes to freedom, 99&1/2% just ain't enough!

Teknicle Difeecullteez

I haven't been able to post for two days because the phone lines totally went down in the last rain storm. I've been having problems for months and France Telecom keeps sending out technicians who tell me "All fixed" then as soon as it rains again, the lines go out.
This time, it rained for an hour heavily on Saturday and that was all she wrote, so just about 6 hours ago, the techs finished their repair work....they redid the connections at three different poles...it's raining now, but I'm still on line!
Maybe it's fixed?
Meanwhile, we have been watching Obama's Inaugaration on CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera.
The crowds in Washington are beyond belief. Obama's speech was incredible. I was struck by the silence of the crowd while he spoke, then the thunder at the end.
I was very happy to see Aretha, but finally, her voice is beginning to lose some range. She was still magnificent and that hat!
I was stunned to heart that Michelle Obama's dress was designed by Isabel Toledo!
Isabel and her husband have been fixtures in the East Village art/fashion world for 25 years. They are great artists and my wife has worn stuff by her.
Well, I have to take care of some other things tonight...
But it's good to be back on line and I'm feeling very good about being an American!

The Cracked Mirror of History

In the early 18th century world of the Dutch, on one hand the world was an ever opening chest of wealth. They went from being an oppressed nation, a land where a battle for Eurpean dominace was being fought between the French, Spanish and English to an independant Republic. A Representative goverment unlike none which Europe had seen before. For a century, they became the prime economic movers of Europe.

This prosperity had a price, the spick and span, severly calvinist protestant society opened itself up to the influences of other cultures. The Dutch became wealthy , in fact, to borrow the phrase of historian Simon Schama, they suffered from an “Embarrassment of Riches.”

The society suffered from an identity crisiss which manifested itself in a number of ways.The calm period of prosperity was beset by moral introspection in which vice was seen as the product of foreign influences.

There had alweays been a dichotomy between the orderly households of the Dutch Burghers and the acceptance of prostitution. Prostitution was illegal, but the tacit understanding was that there were acceptable levels of vice. The need for this outlet was seen as a neccessary outlet to preserve the purity and sanctity of proper Dutch women.

At the same time, of course, as in any normal urban environment, there was a thriving homosexual culture. This was totally underground and like today, it was a part of the thread of humanity. But also as today, the otherness of the homosexual world made it a target for religious warriors who amplified the behavior into a threat to the Dutch State.

In the 1730’s this became a witch hunt and the public laws against homosexuality carried the death penalty. A death penalty beyond simple death, the accused was strangled, beheaded, dismembered and thrown in the river with a 200 pound weight. The order of this sentence was varied according to the social status of the the accused.

There were inquisitions and many lurid pamphl;ets published that “exposed” an entire alternate homosexual society, which in the light of historical analysis, never existed.
The propaganda, though, was used as a patriotic religious tool to root out and kill hundreds of homosexuals and people caught up in the web of betrayal by thoise trying to “buy” their freedomn by dooming others.

The imflamatory language was preached from the pulpits and the fictions were promulgated in pamphlets that became popular mass entertainment which imflamed prejudice. The “vice” was calimed to be imported by the French, and they claimed it had never, ever existed in Dutch society before.

Here we are in the early 21st century and we are seeing the same phenomena in America.
The exposure and eradication of homosexuals is being made into a patriotic/religious crusade in much the same way it was in 1730. Homosexuality is being made into a lurid threat which is somehow organized to try to destroy our culture and life as we know it. Now, of course, we do not advocate the death and disamemberment policy to deal with them., but as a class, they are actively denied rights and benefits available to the rest of Americans under the the law. Hate crimes against homosexuals are routinely dismissed and covered up and under reported.

In an earlier post, I wrote of Pastor Rick Warren and his militant church which has mixed the emotions of patriotism and religion together in a potentially dangerous molotov cocktail, wrtecklessly citing the example of Adolf Hitler and Nazism as models for the kind of fanatic belief that his church needs from its followers to “conquer the world for Jesus”.

One of the rallying points of the activism of his church has been militantly dealing with homosexuality. This week House Democrat, Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee re-introduced The Hate Crimes bill with homosexuals added as a protected group to existing hate-crime legislation.

The bill will make it a federal crime for pastors to use the Bible to speak out against homosexuality if in response to that teaching someone commits an act of violence against a homosexual. This will effectively stifle the ability of pastors to preach the Word of God without fear of prosecution. Vision America has a plan to stop this Bill.

Inspiring someone to commit murder either is or isn't a crime already. The hate crimes bill has nothing to do with the spoken word - it has to deal with people dragging you behind their truck for a mile, or tying to you to a fence and pistol-whipping you in the head. I shouldn't be surprised, but still I am. Whining about your fear that you'll lose the right to incite murder. Only in America.

Needless to say, the Hate Crimes bill doesn't deal with speech. And in fact, America has had a hate crimes law for decades now, and no one has gone to jail for dissing blacks or whites, or people of faith, all of whom are already protected under the existing hate crimes laws. But somehow adding gays to a law that is already on the books, will magically make the law outlaw speech. Right. Evangelical bigots have existed forever and in 1730 and today, they have a serious aversion to the truth, when it becomes a stumbling block to their techniques of mixing patriotism with religion for the sake of control and power.

The above illustration is from 1731 and isa called “Justice Triumphant” and is allegorical engraving depicting the rooting out and destruction of homosexual networks in Dutch Society.

More Eloquent Than I.....

Nina Parris, an 83 year-old Jewish Vermonter and Holocaust survivor, spoke at a rally and march in Burlington, Vermont on January 17, 2009, which was held to protest Israeli atrocities in Gaza, Israel's crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the attempted genocide of the Palestinian people. Dr. Parris came to the United States from Berlin, Germany, in 1937 as an immigrant to escape the Nazis. Her father was Dr. Martin Gumpert, a German-Jewish poet and physician; her mother was Dr. Charlotte Blashko, also a physician

Greenwich Village 1960

Greenwich village new york 1960
envoyé par budsmoker

This is a fascinating little glimpse into another world. I am certain that I know people wandering in and out of these scenes.

Why Buy Roquefort?

Yes, todays featured cheese is Roquefort. I haven't written about cheese in a while, but I have come to this life altering decision! If I was ever given the impossible choice of living in a world without either cheese or chocolate, much as I love chocolate, sorry....
I love cheese even more.

One of my favorite cheese eating experiences is Roquefort, one of the worlds best known cheeses, but a cheese produced in a very small part of France under very specific conditions.

Roquefort is a sheep milk cheese which is inoculated with a culture of the penicilum roqueforti mold which was found naturally in the limestone caves of Roquefort-sur-Sourzon. Originally, the mold was cultivated on bread and introduced into the cheese curd, but now the mold is laboratory cultivated and introduced as an aerosol spray. The milk for the cheese is produced all through the departments of the Aveyron, Aude, Lozere, Gard and Tarn, but the cheese must be produced and aged in the caves of Roquefort-sur-Sourzon to earn the official appelation.

There are many blue cheeses produced in France, notably the Forme d'Ambert, Bleu d'Auvergne, Bleu de Causse and a few other locally produced varieties.
Roquefort though is distinctive in its semi dry, crumbly creaminess. The flavor is not
muddled by a strong aroma reminiscent of camembert as the other cheeses are.
The green veins provide a sharp tang. The overall flavor sensation starts mild, waxes sweet, then smoky and fades to a salty finish. It has no rind, the outer layer is soft and edible and salty.

Penicilum mold flavored cheeses are first mentioned in literature as far back as 79 AD by Pliny the Elder. In 1411, King Charles VI granted the rsident so Roquefort-sur-Sourzon a monopoly regarding the ripening the cheeses, which they had already been doing in the caves for centuries.
In 1925, the first Appellation d'Origine Controllee in France was granted to Roquefort.

In folk lore, the cheese was supposedly discovered by a sheperd who had his lunch of bread and ewes milk cheese and left it in the cave forgotten for months when he was distracted by a young shepardess. When he fond it months later, the cheese had turned to Roquefort.

Roquefort is an interesting cheese to try with wine. It goes spectacularly with some reds and inexplicably not with others. If you were having a wine tasting, it would not be a very good cheese to serve because of these very unpredictable results.

Now, Roquefort cheese is being held hostage to the American beef industry. The Bush administration, yesterday, in what is described as a completely inexplicable move has threatened to shut down the Roquefort import market to America by raising the tariffs by 300%.
This will severely affect the small farmers and cheese mnakers who have expanded because of the worlds love for their great cheese. The Aveyron is one of the poorest departments of France and has tradiitonally relied on Sheep farming on the high arid plains of South Western Central France.

Why is America doing this? Because of the ban on American hormone raised beef in Europe. The EU has banned imports of hormone raised beef research showing that a multitude of health issues affected by the hormonal usage in the American Beef Industry.

The mystery is why America arbitrarily chose to retaliate by destroying the livelihood of a small group of farmers. Perhaps it is because the last time they tried to do this, in the mid 90's, the farmers of the Aveyron united with the dairy industry of America after their leader, Jose Bove demonstrated against the American power play by dismantling McDonalds. Dismantling is a very polite word for destroying.

Mr. Bove went to prison, but emerged as the most charismatic opponent of American multinational agribusiness. He has led the fight against the spread of OGM corn and other seeds and has been successful in haveing OGM material banned in many areas of France and has kept the issue at the forefront of European politics.
Buy Roquefort cheese. This unjust punishment and retalitory measure will not stand.

WHITE RIOT

This is for Mike...who said the Punk Movement kind of missed him...well, here's a head on collision! White Riot by the Clash, live at Victoria park in 1978!