Europe: Successes and Limitations

Moravcsik has a piece in Newsweek International which I have only skimmed but which, on that basis, I largely agree with. The Europe of 2007 reflects a truly remarkable set of achievements which my Tata Madeleine (nee 1909) would never have considered possible. Let's not let its pathologies, complexities, etc. obscure this from view.

Drezner is less sanguine.

I also largely agree with what Martin Rhodes has recently written about the future of Europe.

Current Riders of the Purple Sage

Saw the New Riders of the Purple Sage in town last month and now, through the generosity of Dawg House Audio and Tim Steigler, have a chance to re-hear the show. Had a great old time that night and think it holds up well on disc. Highly recommended.

Black Gold

Just watched Black Gold: Wake Up and Smell the Coffee. Despite the overbearing subtitle, it is actually pretty deft in making its case to the average 1st World coffee drinker. It starts off with the coffee side of things for the first 50 minutes or so, then spends some time on the more general issues of the developing world and the workings of the WTO. I like the latter angle, too, as it focuses less on the WTO qua IO and more on the ways in which the US and EU dictate terms to the poor all while maintaining their own ridiculous agricultural subsidies.

All in all, a nice piece of work. Recommended.

Comfort Women Apology Withdrawn

Via Farls at LGM I read that the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has withdrawn the Japanese government's official 1992 apology for atrocities to "Comfort Women", enslaved into sexual servitude by the Japanese Imperial Army during WWII.

Celtic Dragon runs a longer entry on this, including some gut-wrenching, absolutely nauseating first-hand testimony. What a horrible, horrible thing.

What a world.

GD 19710621 Chateau d'Hérouville

edited 20110903
In January 2007, Hanno Bunjes made a post at his now defunct blog at yurk.net describing the joy of discovering some almost-unseen video footage of the Grateful Dead playing at Chateau d'Hérouville near Paris, France, on June 21, 1971, from the French government's archival copy (Vive la bureaucracie!).

I had a link to that post here, made in February 2007, but linky-no-worky for the defunct blog. So, with Hanno's permission, I am just reposting his post, for posterity, Hanno's original post to posting to yurk.net from January 16, 2007:

I feel like I'm one of the first deadheads in the world to watch this.

The film footage from the legendary Grateful Dead concert in Hérouville (6/21/71) has finally surfaced. For decades it has existed only as a rumor, nobody in deadland claimed to have seen the footage.

How did this come to light now, 35 years after the fact? The French Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (INA) keeps archives of everything (more or less) ever broadcast on French television and radio. They have started to sell the contents of their archives online. Among them are three editions of "Pop Deux" from 1971 that contain footage from the Hérouville concert*. It's that simple.

You can watch short snippets online, but only € 18 will get you the real thing: high-quality, copy-protected DivX video downloads. You'll only be able to watch them with special players and "authenticated" DVD players. The files are watermarked so that INA will be able to trace any copies to your credit card. I don't think we will see this footage on bt.etree.org anytime soon.

It is worth the hassle though. The footage is a deadhead's wet dream coming true. There are several full-length songs** shot with two cameras in colour, with an interview with Jerry Garcia in between. The stage in Hérouville is set up in what looks to be the inner courtyard of the Chateau d'Hérouville. The small audience seems to consist of French villagers who very likely have no idea of who is playing (the gig was never advertised). They do the right thing and dance - probably not least to fight the cold nighttime air that makes the singers' breath condensate. In short, the film is very well done and captures a unique atmosphere. The finding of this footage is a major event in the dead's long history of taping. The footage should be somehow "liberated" and distributed for everyone to see. For now, unfortunately, it looks like that's not going to happen.

[note 2011- I was obviously wrong about that part]

(Wait until the lawyers find about this one - Pop Deux had some really big names on their show.)

* July 24, October 9, November 27 are the relevant dates that come up when you search for "grateful dead". The other search results do not contain Hérouville footage as far as I can determine from the description.

** Loser, China Rider, Hard to Handle, Deal, Sugar Magnolia and Sing Me Back Home, and others

P.S. After I finished the post I found "http://paris70.free.fr/auvers71.htm">this excellent account of the events at Château d'Hérouville. Read it. Garcia calls it "the group's most exotic gig".

I will be making a full-on post about this gig at some point. In the meantime, thanks Hanno!

Yes, we torture

According to Col. Stuart Herrington. Via Sully.

IOs and Politics

Henry notes that Putin is pushing back against the OSCE.

First, I am less sanguine than Henry about the pure-drivenness of the OSCE's motives. Makes perfect sense to me that it should be anti-Russian. Power --> institutions.

Second, Putin is a scary man. "Spook spooky spook" -- hilarious!

Third, sure is getting chilly in East-West relations. Brrrr.

Battle of Algiers

Finally saw Battle of Algiers last night ... magnificent! It will reward repeated viewing. Of course, the torture and counterinsurgency techniques depicted seem, with certain exceptions, relatively mild compared to what we are surely doing in Iraq and in connection with the GWOT. With certain exceptions (the bombing of occuped houses, execution), a sense of civilization and restraint, however vague, still seems to permeate things. And this notwithstanding Mathieu's denial (really, evasion of the question) of constraints imposed by law.

Check out Farls on The Dark Soul of Colonel Mathieu. Brilliant stuff. Not the banality of evil, Farls claims, but more a statement about how humans can be mere technologies of domination. For whom or for what may be irrelevant.

I plan on posting on some of Joy Gordon's related ideas at some point.

Plaidoyer pour la France

Thank you, Rob.

Will the Rhino Roar?

"The Music Never Stopped" torrent site (tmnsp.net) has been rebranded as Jerome's Place, likely in anticipation of a less benign attitude toward torrent Grateful Dead related material by the new "keepers of the vault", Rhino Records. Will the Rhino roar? Too soon to say, but I wouldn't bet against it.

In the meantime, RIP TMNSP -- the project that created the techtonic shift in what we imagine possible in terms of collecting GD &c music.

Long Time Gone

Six months, long time away. I could never be a real (regular) blogger. Anyway, I am going to try to post occasionally.

Taking a Shit is a Political Act

Carol Brightman's Sweet Chaos: The Grateful Dead's American Adventure offers the thesis that Garcia and the Grateful Dead were "apolitical" and should be condemned to that extent, having failed to stand up (as the Berkeley radicals did) to the injustices and corruptions of American and international politics in the 60s and 70s. The GD/San Francisco/Merry Prankster thing was about sex, drugs and rock & roll, the denial of political responsibility, while the Berkeley thing was about politics first and foremost. She pursues a book-length exercise in head-scratching, asking herself and the reader how these people could have been so irresponsible while there was injustice in the world and while good radicals such as herself fought the good fight.

This is unadulterated bullshit. Wavy Gravy said on 2/9/73 at the Maples Pavilion (Stanford) that "taking a shit is a political act ... ", and he was dead right. Garcia's and the GD's politics weren't of the in-your-face-to-fight-injustice kind favored by the Berkeley radicals. But they were a politics nonetheless. Indeed, I think they were based on a coherent (if implicit) political philosophy in which living well (hedonism?) expresses an aspiration toward which we all (and society itself) might work.

These thoughts are obviously half-baked, and I am sure there are serious works of political philosophy which might articulate this kind of world view. I'd sure like to track them down and check them out.

Microphonicus Rex

Tasting, Tasting.

https://archive.org/details/gd1966-07-29.sbd.2243.sbeok.shnf