Welcome to Swans Commentary http://www.swans.com/ May 3, 2010
*** Many thanks to Michael DeLang & Phyllis Feigenbaum, and Frances
Greenspan for their *very* generous donations. ***
Note from the Editors: "Our products and services contribute to a
better quality of life. They provide the freedom to move, to heat and
to see." So reads the company description on BP's Web site, while one
of their products spews from the ocean floor and drifts dangerously
toward the US Gulf Coast in what could prove to be a veritable ecologic
and economic disaster in a region whose quality of life is already
suffering. One man who's no doubt glad to see the spotlight turn from
his company to BP is Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, who
along with several colleagues was pilloried by the US Senate last week
in a made-for-television show trial. In case you missed it, Gilles
d'Aymery watched all 10 hours and sums up the winners and losers of the
hypocrisy-laden spectacle, complete with John Ensign's moral outrage!
It's no surprise, then, that Michael Doliner is so piqued as he
considers Blanche Lincoln's proposed derivative legislation that is
designed to fail -- a charade given relevance by one of CounterPunch's
Cockburns. Equally inept was Julia Whitty's recent Mother Jones article
that repackaged imperial myths on population; Michael Barker sets the
record straight since that "progressive" publication cannot dare
criticize imperialism. Is there an alternative to this destructive
system? Our Editor-in-Chief thinks so, but it's definitely not the Tea
Party...
Shifting to Africa, Michael Barker examines capitalist "humanitarians"
and Human Rights Watch's neoliberal advisors, while our brother in
Ghana, Femi Akomolafe, explains why every day is April Fools' Day in
Nigeria. Two brothers in the brotherhood of the word were Jack Kerouac
and Allen Ginsberg, whose correspondence helped to forge the Beat
Generation -- Jonah Raskin reviews a new collection of their letters.
And turning insanity into humor as only he can, Art Shay invokes
"Waiting for Godot" while trapped in the computerized customer service
maze of PayPal, something we hope you'll never experience when trying
to submit a donation to Swans...
Our Arts & Culture corner is oozing with the likes of Peter Byrne on the
play "Chronicles of Long Kesh" and Charles Marowitz on silent-screen
actor John Gilbert. Francesca Saieva describes the "fragments of
intertextuality" of Eliot's "The Waste Land," and Maxwell Clark pokes
fun at Swans in a creative and amusing poem. We close with your letters
on progressive publications and Michael Barker's critique of Mother
Jones, Art Shay's admonition of the abuse that starts with the priest
and leads to the pope, with a unique solution, and more.
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Cordially, Gilles d'Aymery
-- Swans
"Hungry man, reach for the book: It is a weapon." B. Brecht
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