Radio Open Source: Graham Robb's Paris -- 18 Arrested Explosions

Graham Robb's Paris: 18 Arrested Explosions
By Chris Lydon
Radio Open Source



Graham Robb is making France and the French irresistible again. With an entirely unconventional gift for historically-informed tale-spinning, his Parisians delivers nearly a score of long anecdotes about famous people in real scenes beyond imagining.

Here is Hitler on a tourist sweep through depopulated boulevards of Paris at dawn on a weekend in June, 1940 — thinking out loud with Albert Speer about how the Paris effect might be reproduced in Berlin.

There are Miles Davis and the singer Juliette Greco in love in 1949, and in guileless conversations about “existentialisme” with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir at the Cafe de Flore.

Then there is the assassination attempt that Francois Mitterand stage-managed against himself in 1957 — perhaps in a sort of homage to the “miracle” that saved Charles de Gaulle from great bursts of gunfire inside the Cathedral of Notre Dame in 1944. Mitterand, who liked being known as “the Fox,” survived even the exposure of his own hoax — because, Graham Robb suggests, the French like a trickster and a touch of criminality at the top.

My favorite Robb character, from the 1830s, is the arch-criminal and escape artist Vidocq, a master of disguises who hid himself on Paris streets as a trash pile, who conspired with the cops and built the first private detective agency known to the world.

What is Graham Robb up to? In his fragmentary episodes, he seems to be telling us something of the non-linear course of events in general. His “explosive fragments,” I observe, remind me of David Shields’ ideal for the modern “lyric essay”: an explosion on every page. Yes, but no, Graham Robb rejoins:

Yes, it’s nice to have explosive fragments, but it’s also nice to just arrest the explosion at a particular moment and see exactly what’s going on at the moment of impact, the moment of destruction, and just take a lot more time to look at things which are just flashing past. It’s not a search engine kind of history. It’s almost the opposite. It’s the single fragment kind of history, and how much you can discover in one particular thing if you stop and look at it and go into it as deeply as possible, instead of skimming over the surface and collecting impressions.

Parisians extends the project of Robb’s breakthrough, The Discovery of France, the fruit of 4 years and 14,000 miles on a bicycle, in which Robb reintroduced France as, until yesterday, anything but a single, sovereign culture. He found a new planet at every bike resting spot, “a vast encyclopedia of micro-civilizations” in sum. His France is a nation of villages where, when the Eiffel Tower went up in 1889, only about 20 percent of the population spoke French. The short form of Parisians is: out with old notions of order, majesty and the grandeur of Paris; in with the ragged, the jagged, the forgotten personal perspectives, the violent and the out-and-out weird. Robb’s stress on fragmentation seems deliberately set against the national impulse in President Sarkozy’s politics — against Sarko’s famous contempt for the riotous, car-burning brown-skinned racaille, or scum, of Paris’s near suburbs.

It’s a bit ironic that Sarkozy started a debate on a national identity, because he is stressing the rifts that there are in French and Parisian society. He’s a very Parisian president. The biggest rift in France is between Paris and the provinces…. And there is also the rift between bourgeois Paris, white Paris and so-called immigrant Paris which very often isn’t immigrant at all, they’re French too. Sarkozy’s exploited that old fear that probably goes way back to the time of the Gauls… It’s the fear of what lies beyond in the hinterland, and that fear is more virulent than ever in Paris. And even today, if you tell some Parisians that you’ve been to Clichy-sous-Bois or one of the other northern suburbs, they won’t believe you. They won’t believe that you can go there and talk to people and come back alive.

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Libya: UN security council backs no-fly zone and air strikes -- UN votes in favour of 'all necessary measures short of an occupation force'

Libya: UN security council backs no-fly zone and air strikesUN votes in favour of 'all necessary measures short of an occupation force' as Tripoli regime warns of counterattack
Guardian (United Kingdom)

British and French military aircraft are preparing to protect the Libyan rebel stronghold of Benghazi after the UN security council voted in favour of a no-fly zone and air strikes against Muammar Gaddafi's forces.

With Gaddafi's troops closing in on Benghazi, the French prime minister, François Fillon, said "time is of the essence" and that France would support military action within hours of the vote.

But a US official was more cautious, warning against expectations of imminent action. French planes will operate from bases on its Mediterranean coast. Several Arab countries have promised to join the operation. The US backed the resolution, a complete turnaround after weeks of resisting no-fly zone proposals, but has not yet said what role it would play in military action.

The 15-member security council voted in favour of a resolution authorising all necessary measures to protect civilians under threat of attack, in particular Benghazi. Ten members voted in favour, with five abstaining, including China, Russia and Germany. The resolution ruled out putting troops on the ground.

Rebels in Benghazi celebrated in the streets after the no-fly vote was announced. Gaddafi called the vote "flagrant colonisation" and warned of dire consequences. "This is craziness, madness, arrogance," he told the Portuguese TV channel. RTP. "If the world gets crazy with us, we will get crazy too. We will respond."

In a chilling message earlier, he also threatened that no mercy would be shown to residents of Benghazi who resisted him. Earlier, his regime issued a strong warning that it would target all maritime traffic in the Mediterranean if it is targeted by foreign forces. In a statement broadcast on Libyan television, the defence ministry said: "Any foreign military act against Libya will expose all air and maritime traffic in the Mediterranean Sea to danger and civilian and military [facilities] will become targets of Libya's counterattack."

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Hervé Kempf: Salary Ceiling, a Lever for Change

Salary Ceiling, a Lever for Change
by Hervé Kempf
Truthout

Over the last 30 years, disparities in income have exploded. While a big company CEO earned about 35 times the average salary of one of his employees during the Trentes glorieuses [the French appellation for the period of glowing economic prosperity from 1945 to 1975], today, he earns 300 times as much. Faced with this reality, the idea of a maximum salary is making its way in public debate. Let us review the arguments in favor of such a measure:

The idea is developing slowly - too slowly, undoubtedly, but surely - in sync with the awakening of the collective consciousness: a maximum acceptable income (MAI) is a necessity to repair societal connections and to institute environmental and social policy. Should it be called "allowable," "admissible," "acceptable?" That's not important. The principle is clear: too great inequality is not acceptable. Earning ten or thirty times more than others is perhaps admissible, earning three hundred times or a thousand times more is simply senseless. And in the period since Patrick Viveret and his research group relaunched the idea of a MAI at the beginning of the 2000s, it has become an essential element in policies of change.

I shall first show why the MAI is necessary from an environmental perspective. As we know, the increase in inequality over the last 30 years constitutes the central characteristic of capitalism's recent evolution. Numerous studies document this upsurge in inequalities. One of them, conducted by two economists from Harvard and the Federal Reserve Board, is among the most telling. Carola Frydman et Raven E. Saks [1] have compared the relationship between the salaries earned by the three top executives of the 500 biggest American companies and the average salary of their employees. This indicator of the progression of inequality remained stable from the 1940s, when the study's observations begin, up to the 1970s: the bosses at the companies included earned roughly 35 times the average salary of their employees. Then, starting in the 1980s, there's a discontinuity and the ratio increases constantly until it reaches over 300 in the 2000s.

Thus did capitalism experience a major turning point after the period known as the "Trente Glorieuses" in France [1945-75]. During that period, the collective growth in wealth allowed by the continuous rise in productivity was rather equitably distributed between capital and labor, such that the ratios of inequality remained stable. After the 1980s, a complex of circumstances, which are not appropriate to analyze here, led to an ever more pronounced discontinuity between the holders of capital and the mass of citizens[2]. The share of salaries (earned income) in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) sharply declined in favor of returns to capital. The European Commission's economic database, Ameco, elucidates the phenomenon [3]: in France, for example, salaries' share of GDP went from an average of 63 percent during the 1960s and 1970s to 57 percent during the 2000s, a drop of six points.

Consequently, the oligarchy is accumulating income and wealth to an extent not seen for a century. It spends its wealth in a frenzied consumption of yachts, private planes, immense residences, jewels, exotic trips: a flashy jumble of sumptuary squandering.

Why is this behavior a powerful motor of the environmental crisis? To understand that, we must turn to the great economist Thorstein Veblen. What did Veblen say? That the tendency to compete is inherent to human nature. We all have a propensity to compare ourselves to one another and we seek to demonstrate a little superiority, a symbolic difference compared to the people among whom we live, by such and such an external trait.

Veblen subsequently observed that several classes ordinarily exist within any given society. Each class is governed by the principle of competitive ostentation. And within each class, individuals take as their model the behavior pertaining in the class above, the conduct of which indicates what is good, what is chic, to do. The imitated social class itself takes its example from the class immediately above it on the scale of fortune and so on from the bottom to the top, such that the class located at the summit defines the cultural model of what is prestigious, of what extends to others.

What happens in a highly unequal society? It generates enormous waste because the material squandering that characterizes the oligarchy - itself prey to competition in conspicuous consumption - serves as an example to the whole society. Each at his own level, to the limit of his income, seeks to acquire the most attractive goods and symbols. Media, advertising, films, soap operas, magazines, celebrities are tools for the diffusion of the dominant cultural model.

Consume Less to Share Better

So then, how does the oligarchy block the developments necessary to prevent aggravation of the environmental crisis? Directly, of course, through the powerful - political, economic and media - levers it enjoys and which it exploits to maintain its privileges. Indirectly - and just as importantly - by this cultural model of consumption that impregnates the entire society and defines normality for it.

Now, preventing the aggravation of the environmental crisis and even beginning to restore the environment resides in the rather simple principle: humanity must reduce its impact on the biosphere. Achieving that goal is also simple in principle: it means reducing our extractions of minerals, wood, water, gold, oil etc. and reducing our green house gas emissions, as well as chemical, radioactive, packaging, and other wastes. In other words, reduce our societies' overall material consumption.
Who is going to reduce their material consumption? The 20 to 30 percent of the world's population that consume close to 70 percent of the resources extracted annually from the biosphere. Therefore, it's from these 20 to 30 percent that the change must come, which essentially means from the peoples of North America, Europe and Japan, as well as from the rich classes of emerging countries.

However, within these overdeveloped societies, we are not going to suggest that the poor, that those with modest income, reduce their material and energy consumption. Nor is it the hyper-rich only who must effect this reduction: there are not enough of them for that to sufficiently change the collective environmental impact. In fact, a reduction in material consumption must be suggested to the aggregate of Western middle classes.

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Robin Wood: Only (Dis)Connect; and Never Relaxez-Vous; or, I Can’t Sleep

Only (Dis)Connect; and Never Relaxez-Vous; or, ‘I Can’t Sleep’
by Robin Wood
Film International



...

Confessions of an Incompetent Film Critic

For people of my generation, who grew up in the 1940s/50s on an exclusive diet of classical Hollywood cinema (with the occasional British movie), the European ‘arthouse’ cinema always presented problems which linger on even today, a simple basic one being that of following the plot. This is not because the plot is necessarily complex or obscure, but, frequently, because of the way in which the characters are introduced and the action presented. When I grew up there was remarkably little serious criticism available (not much beyond the weekly reviews), and film studies courses in schools or universities were not even thought of. I was seventeen when I saw my first foreign language film (Torment/Frenzy [Hets, 1944], by Alf Sjöberg, from an early but already characteristic screenplay by Ingmar Bergman). I knew from the reviews that it would carry me far beyond anything I had seen previously, both in style and subject-matter, and my hand was trembling when I bought my ticket. I believe I had great difficulty following it (my first subtitles, not to mention extreme psychological disturbance). Fifty-five years later I still have the same problem when confronted with the films of Claire Denis (or Michael Haneke, or Hou Hsiao-Hsien…). The habits acquired during one’s formative years are never quite cast off; when I showed I Can’t Sleep to a graduate film group last year, my students corrected me over a number of details and pointed out many things I hadn’t noticed, although this was their first viewing of the film and I had already watched it three times. A classical Hollywood film – however intelligent and complex – is dependent on its surface level upon ‘popular’ appeal and its action must be fully comprehensible to a general audience at one viewing, covering all levels of educatedness from the illiterate to the university professor. (The same was of course true of the Elizabethan theatre – see, for example, the conventions of the soliloquy and the aside, wherein a character explains his/her motivation, reactions or thoughts to the audience). One of the cardinal rules was that every plot point must be doubly articulated, in both the action and the dialogue; another was the use of the cut to close-up that tells us ‘This character is important’; yet another, the presence of instantly recognizable stars or character actors. All of these Denis systematically denies us. It is a part of her great distinction that her films (and especially I Can’t Sleep, arguably her masterpiece to date) demand intense and continuous mental activity from the spectator: we are not to miss a single detail or to pass over a gesture or facial expression, even if it is shown in long shot within an ensemble, with no ‘helpful’ underlining and no ‘spelling out’ in dialogue.

It is the particular distinction of Denis’ cinema that sets it apart from – almost, indeed, in opposition to – the work of many of our most celebrated ‘arthouse’ directors: Bergman, for example, or Fellini or Antonioni. Their films are rooted in autobiography – not necessarily in any literal sense, but in terms of personal introspection – whereas Denis left autobiography behind with Chocolat, and even that film is notable for its poise and critical distance, its objectivity. Where Bergman or Fellini seems to be saying to us ‘Come with me and I’ll tell you my secrets, share my experiences – how I feel about things, my thoughts about existence’, Denis issues a very different invitation to the spectator: ‘Come with me and we’ll play a game, albeit a serious one. Let’s see how much you can notice in what I decide to show you, how you interpret what you see and hear, what connections you can make, how much can be explained and how much remains mysterious and uncertain, as so much in our lives remains unclear. I’ll allow you a certain leeway of interpretation, because I don’t always understand everything myself, not even my own creations, though I’ll be as precise as possible…’ A few examples from the film’s first ten minutes will illustrate various aspects of this.

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Paul Mason: Twenty reasons why it's kicking off everywhere

Twenty reasons why it's kicking off everywhere
by Paul Mason
BBC

We've had revolution in Tunisia, Egypt's Mubarak is teetering; in Yemen, Jordan and Syria suddenly protests have appeared. In Ireland young techno-savvy professionals are agitating for a "Second Republic"; in France the youth from banlieues battled police on the streets to defend the retirement rights of 60-year olds; in Greece striking and rioting have become a national pastime. And in Britain we've had riots and student occupations that changed the political mood.

What's going on? What's the wider social dynamic?

My editors yesterday asked me put some bullet points down for a discussion on the programme that then didn't happen but I am throwing them into the mix here, on the basis of various conversations with academics who study this and also the participants themselves.

At the heart of it all are young people, obviously; students; westernised; secularised. They use social media - as the mainstream media has now woken up to - but this obsession with reporting "they use twitter" is missing the point of what they use it for.

In so far as there are common threads to be found in these different situation, here's 20 things I have spotted:

1. At the heart if it all is a new sociological type: the graduate with no future

2. ...with access to social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and eg Yfrog so they can express themselves in a variety of situations ranging from parliamentary democracy to tyrrany.

3. Therefore truth moves faster than lies, and propaganda becomes flammable.

4. They are not prone to traditional and endemic ideologies: Labourism, Islamism, Fianna Fail Catholicism etc... in fact hermetic ideologies of all forms are rejected.

5. Women very numerous as the backbone of movements. After twenty years of modernised labour markets and higher-education access the "archetypal" protest leader, organizer, facilitator, spokesperson now is an educated young woman.

6. Horizontalism has become endemic because technology makes it easy: it kills vertical hierarchies spontaneously, whereas before - and the quintessential experience of the 20th century - was the killing of dissent within movements, the channeling of movements and their bureaucratisaton.

7. Memes: "A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures." (Wikipedia) - so what happens is that ideas arise, are very quickly "market tested" and either take off, bubble under, insinuate themselves or if they are deemed no good they disappear. Ideas self-replicate like genes. Prior to the internet this theory (see Richard Dawkins, 1976) seemed an over-statement but you can now clearly trace the evolution of memes.

8. They all seem to know each other: not only is the network more powerful than the hierarchy - but the ad-hoc network has become easier to form. So if you "follow" somebody from the UCL occupation on Twitter, as I have done, you can easily run into a radical blogger from Egypt, or a lecturer in peaceful resistance in California who mainly does work on Burma so then there are the Burmese tweets to follow. During the early 20th century people would ride hanging on the undersides of train carriages across borders just to make links like these.

9. The specifics of economic failure: the rise of mass access to university-level education is a given. Maybe soon even 50% in higher education will be not enough. In most of the world this is being funded by personal indebtedess - so people are making a rational judgement to go into debt so they will be better paid later. However the prospect of ten years of fiscal retrenchment in some countries means they now know they will be poorer than their parents. And the effect has been like throwing a light switch; the prosperity story is replaced with the doom story, even if for individuals reality will be more complex, and not as bad as they expect.

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~Bad Bitch Of The Week: Trya Banks At French Vogue's 90th Anniversary Gala~

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“Every woman has a story,” -Tyra Banks

We all know I'm not Tyra's biggest fan but this week she proved my theory that she definitely has a inner bad bitch... She looked nothing short of fierce at French Vogue's 90th Anniversary Gala in Paris this week. Welcome to the Bad Bitch Club Tyra...

Kisses Bitches...

Glamour Whore...xoxo

~Not Even For Uncle Karl Will I Cheat On My Pepsi~

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“Unless you can find some sort of loyalty, you cannot find unity and peace in your active living” ~Josiah Royce

Uncle Karl's latest endeavor is a Coca-Cola Light (Diet Coke in France) campaign. He redesigned the bottle which now bears his likeness and a pink cap. Lagerfeld also shot the ad campaign featuring the fabulous Coca Rocha. While I will NEVER switch over to Coke, especially diet, I do think the bottle and accompanying campaign are fabulous and encourage non-pepsi addicts, to purchase the limited edition set of a bottle and bottle opener for $64 in Paris or at Colette.

Kisses Bitches...

Glamour Whore...xoxo

~Paris Fashion Week Fall 2010: Alexander McQueen~

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“It was a very moving experience to take a deep and serious look at his last collection. It showed Lee’s unique talent to create pieces of beauty that touch many of your senses, leaving one enriched” -Robert Polet, President and Chief Executive Officer of Gucci Group.


All week I have been looking at pictures and video from Paris Fashion Week for Fall 2010. The shows are incredible. Simply incredible. The late great Alexander McQueen's show however...UTTERLY MAGNIFICENT. Seriously. I can barely think, speak or type. Breathing is somewhat of an issue also at this point. I am not going to dwell on the fact that he is not here or that this collection maybe one of his best yet. Instead I will simply say: Enjoy the sublimely decadent couture you are about to see and please... take it ALL in. ALL OF IT. Marvel at the fab spiked mohawks and FIERCE studded shoes/boots. So divine...



*Sigh*

Read more HERE

Kisses Bitches...
Glamour Whore...xoxo

~Brooke Shields for Vogue Paris March 2010: Ummmm~

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"Modeling is the world that I feel most welcome in." -Brooke Shields

Bruce Webber shot Brooke Shields for Paris Vogue's March issue... Apparently his vision was "naughty fake cop show". I'm assuming he was thinking "campy" but all I feel while looking at the pix is "confused"...maybe it's just me.

Have a look:



So? Whaddya think?!

poll by twiigs.com

Kisses Bitches...
Glamour Whore...xoxo

~I May Never Wear Clothes Again~

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Seduce my mind and you can have my body,
Find my soul and I'm yours forever.
~ Anonymous ~

Young French lingerie label "Petticoats Tess" Spring 2010 line is so beautiful I may never wear outer-clothes again. Seriously. These pieces are just too gorgeous and sexy to cover up.



Mayor Bloomberg may as well rename West Broadway "Petticoat Junction", because I am about to cause quite a stir on the streets of Gotham walking around in these gorgeous undergarments without any over-garments.



Pants are so over-rated anyway... Right?!



Kisses Bitches...
Glamour Whore...xoxo

~Ri-Ri Attends The NRJ Music Awards 2010 in Cannes, France~

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"Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride." —Charles Caleb Colton

Riri attended the NRJ Music Awards in Cannes France wearing a STUNNING Jean Paul Gaultier white and silver gown. ALWAYS on point...ALWAYS.



The Black Eyes Peas were in attendance also... And they brought Fergie *sigh*
**I am now invoking my right to remain silent**



AHA!! I knew I would find something nice to say.. Ready? Her skin looks better than it ever has. Yup. Beautiful. Seriously. Click on the photos to see larger versions. Mz.Licious-Duhamel (I'm assuming she has hyphened her original surname "Licious" (*sigh*) and her married name) looks like she may have spent a day at a spa.

Kisses Bitches...
Glamour Whore...xoxo