Noam Chomsky: the American Socrates on an Upbeat

October 28th, 2010

Chantal Berman photo

Noam Chomsky, after all these years, retains the power to shock — in the bright title of his new collection, Hopes and Prospects, and with what sounds like good news in this conversation.

It’s Professor Chomsky’s cheerful conviction, drawing on his own trials in the Vietnam War resistance, that anti-war understanding and feeling run much deeper and stronger today in a freer, more humane America. It’s because of that popular war opposition today — inarticulate and ill-led, perhaps, but nonetheless verifiable — that the US assaults on Iraq and Afghanistan have not incuded the saturation bombing and chemical warfare that were standard fare in Vietnam and Cambodia.

He is sure that the anti-incumbent rage reported in the Tea Party overlaps substantially with his own chronic dismay at elite manipulations and moral corruption in our politics. The larger part of the Tea Party, he says, is built on real grievances in longer hours, shorter pay, ever-rising job insecurity.

In short, there’s a vast pool of discontent out there to be organized by the Left, he says, if the United States had a functioning Left even as it did in the 1930s. As we say, “If we had ham, we could have ham and eggs — if we had eggs.”

Noam Chomsky does not pine idly, as I do, for the Anti-Imperialist League of a century ago — when Mark Twain, the biggest rock star in the land, declared: “I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle puts its talons on any other land;” and the impeccable William James, father of philosophical Pragmatism, fulminated Jeremiah-Wright-style: “God damn the U.S. for its vile conduct” in the Philippines, as James put it in 1903. Nor is Chomsky compelled, as I often am, to reach back to the Transcendentalist purity of the great Thoreau, who withheld his taxes and went to jail during the war with Mexico and roared in protest, in the Tea Party spirit, “Why the United States Government never performed an act of justice in its life!”

No, Professor Chomsky is inclined to believe there is more and stronger anti-imperialist sentiment today than in Concord, Massachusetts in 1846, when Thoreau spent his night in jail, or even in 1967, when thousands of young men decided to leave their country rather than be drafted, and Chomsky himself risked a long prison sentence for counselling them.

We live in the gravest of emergencies — nuclear and environmental. Our country is led by a president that Noam Chomsky never much celebrated. And still he observes that “general consciousness has changed” in his time, fundamentally for the better.

General consciousness has changed on all sorts of issues. There are lots of things that were considered perfectly legitimate in the early 1960s that are almost out of the question now.

Women’s rights, environmental concerns, gay rights, civil rights for blacks… a lot of things have changed in the country. It’s gotten a lot more civilized. And one part of that is anti-imperialism. Take a look at polls now. The majority for some time has been in favor of withdrawing from Afghanistan. Now that didn’t happen in the case of Vietnam till it was way beyond the level of any fighting now. So it’s important, it’s real. The Anti-Imperialist League was an important pocket of American intellectual history. It did not succeed in impeding the war effort [in the Philippines]… In the case of the Iraq War, it’s probably the first time in the history of imperialism, the only time I can think of, when there was massive popular opposition to the war. My students here, for example, insisted on calling off classes and joining a big demonstration in Boston, and it happened all over. This was before the war started, before the war officially began. There was massive protest, and that’s one of the reasons why, awful as it was, it was somewhat constrained, certainly as compared with Indo-China. Well, these are signs of anti-imperialism. You’re perfectly right that they’re not organized, but we shouldn’t romanticize Thoreau and Mark Twain. They were important. It’s good that they did what they did, but it was nothing like the scale that we take for granted now.

Professor Noam Chomsky with Chris Lydon in his MIT office, October 19, 2010

Noam Chomsky is the closest thing we have to Socrates in the American public square: a scathing questioner of virtually every common premise about who we Americans are and what we’re up to in the world. We’ve never heard him as mellow as this — ever wary of a hemlock ending, but good-humored about that, too.

DVD: Jimi Hendrix - The Guitar Hero (2010)

By Nick Deriso

"The Guitar Hero" moves away from the tabloid side of the Jimi Hendrix myth, instead delving into the American guitarist's sweeping impact on rock music and the instrument. That makes director Jon Brewer's film not so much a biography, per se, as it is tone-poem love letter to Hendrix's muse, and how it finally ignited.

I think, at this late date, that makes it more interesting. For me, reanimating his playing legend -- a still-indelible blending of African-American roots-music showmanship, lyrical Dylanesque whimsy and grease-fire virtuosity -- is this new DVD's great triumph.

"The Guitar Hero" (Imagine Entertainment) begins with a title sequence that whips the viewer around on an old wooden roller coaster, powerful imagery that recalls how Hendrix took the familiar artiface of electric guitar and made it such an intuitive, otherworldly experience -- confusing, exciting, surprising, and very, very loud.

Then it settles into a illuminating examination of how his genius shot through the 1960s rock royalty in swinging 1960s London -- and completed his artistic journey to stardom.

We join the story 10 days into that seminal 1966 visit, as Hendrix -- who'd been sitting out in the audience -- asked to come on stage with Eric Clapton and Cream. Nobody had ever made such a gutty request, Clapton says on "The Guitar Hero." Hendrix then tore through songs by old-school legends like Howlin' Wolf, unfurling a rewired blues on "Cutting Floor" that plugged directly into the new age. The room was left in a vacuum of speechless wonder.

"This is young guy," Clapton says, "doing what they do, but he's brought it into this decade."

Mick Taylor, the celebrated sideman with the Rolling Stones and John Mayall, loaned him an instrument so he could play a few gigs. Hendrix famously turned the guitar upside down -- he was left handed -- and began performing all across town.

Drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding were quickly added, settling the lineup of Hendrix's overnight-sensation band, the Experience. They were on tour in Europe before the trio had really even gotten to know one another. Hendrix's impishly magnetic personality, retro-cool fashion sense, and flinty outsider inventiveness glued them together.

He almost immediately changed the scene, drawing front-row fandom from the Beatles, Cream, the Stones, Steve Winwood, the Animals, The Who, members of Yes, and a number of other contemporary British bands.

"That was just before (Cream) left for America, and Jimi had completely taken over -- with a trio," says Clapton, who brought Pete Townshend along one night. "Suddenly, we were like yesterday's newspapers."

Clapton later movingly talks about having purchased a left-handed guitar for Hendrix, just a day before he passed.

"Jimi Hendrix -- The Guitar Hero," narrated by Slash (Guns n Roses/Velvet Revolver), also features interviews with Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills and Nash; the Rolling Stones' Taylor; Dave Mason (a sometime studio sideman with Hendrix); Lemmy Kilmister (once a Hendrix roadie), The Monkees' Mickey Dolenz, Chris Squire of Yes and others. Their thoughts are paired with a bevy of unreleased archival footage -- including 8mm silent footage from Hendrix's still largely unbelievable 1967 opening dates for Dolenz's band; a full performance of "Hey Joe," recorded with the Experience at the Marquee in London; and a 20-page full-color booklet.

We rediscover a figure who carried with him an age-old American story -- Hendrix had come to Europe to avoid the lingering racism that pigeonholed blacks -- but with an adaptive, incendiary new approach that updated the showmanship of chitlin-circuit blues stars like Freddie King. Once he'd become famous overseas, recognition finally followed in Hendrix's home country -- if only for a moment.

There would be just four albums, and roughly 600 concerts, from Hendrix in a four-year span before he accidentially overdosed in 1970 at just 27.

He'd begun learning his craft as a hard-luck orphan teen, playing pick up gigs with Ray Charles and other visiting bands in his native Seattle. Hendrix was hired and fired from touring groups behind the likes of Little Richard and Tina Turner, mostly because he wouldn't conform. He'd add sharp-edged flourishes to the sheet-music riffs, refuse to wear the uniform. Hendrix just couldn't be pushed to the back of a bandstand.

It wasn't until this trip to London, however, that things finally fell into place for Hendrix as a musician. The biggest names in music now believed in him, just as much as he'd always believed in himself.

That's why, when he returned to the U.S. to perform at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, famously sending his instrument up in flames, Hendrix seemed to arrive fully formed. Like a superstar already shooting halfway across the sky.

He was.

Thomas Sayers Ellis at the Harlem Arts Salon

Sunday, 9/26/2010 - The "genuine negro hero," Thomas Sayers Ellis read (and held court) at the launch party for his new book of poetry "Skin, Inc." The event was hosted by Margaret Porter Troupe, curator and founder of the Harlem Arts Salon, http://www.harlemartssalon.com/.

How Obama Saved Capitalism and Lost the Midterms

By TIMOTHY EGAN

Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.

 

If I were one of the big corporate donors who bankrolled the Republican tide that carried into office more than 50 new Republicans in the House, I would be wary of what you just bought.

For no matter your view of President Obama, he effectively saved capitalism. And for that, he paid a terrible political price.

Suppose you had $100,000 to invest on the day Barack Obama was inaugurated. Why bet on a liberal Democrat? Here’s why: the presidency of George W. Bush produced the worst stock market decline of any president in history. The net worth of American households collapsed as Bush slipped away. And if you needed a loan to buy a house or stay in business, private sector borrowing was dead when he handed over power.

As of election day, Nov. 2, 2010, your $100,000 was worth about $177,000 if invested strictly in the NASDAQ average for the entirety of the Obama administration, and $148,000 if bet on the Standard & Poors 500 major companies. This works out to returns of 77 percent and 48 percent.

But markets, though forward-looking, are not considered accurate measurements of the economy, and the Great Recession skewed the Bush numbers. O.K. How about looking at the big financial institutions that keep the motors of capitalism running — banks and auto companies?

The banking system was resuscitated by $700 billion in bailouts started by Bush (a fact unknown by a majority of Americans), and finished by Obama, with help from the Federal Reserve. It worked. The government is expected to break even on a risky bet to stabilize the global free market system. Had Obama followed the populist instincts of many in his party, the underpinnings of big capitalism could have collapsed. He did this without nationalizing banks, as other Democrats had urged.
 
Saving the American auto industry, which has been a huge drag on Obama’s political capital, is a monumental achievement that few appreciate, unless you live in Michigan. After getting their taxpayer lifeline from Obama, both General Motors and Chrysler are now making money by making cars. New plants are even scheduled to open. More than 1 million jobs would have disappeared had the domestic auto sector been liquidated.

“An http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/107xx/doc10781/11-30-Premiums.pdf">apology is due Barack Obama,” wrote The Economist, which had opposed the $86 billion auto bailout. As for Government Motors: after emerging from bankruptcy, it will go public with a new stock offering in just a few weeks, and the United States government, with its 60 percent share of common stock, stands to make a profit. Yes, an industry was saved, and the government will probably make money on the deal — one of Obama’s signature economic successes.

Interest rates are at record lows. Corporate profits are lighting up boardrooms; it is one of the best years for earnings in a decade.

All of the above is good for capitalism, and should end any serious-minded discussion about Obama the socialist. But more than anything, the fact that the president took on the structural flaws of a broken free enterprise system instead of focusing on things that the average voter could understand explains why his party was routed on Tuesday. Obama got on the wrong side of voter anxiety in a decade of diminished fortunes.

“We have done things that people don’t even know about,” Obama told Jon Stewart. Certainly. The three signature accomplishments of his first two years — a health care law that will make life easier for millions of people, financial reform that attempts to level the playing field with Wall Street, and the $814 billion stimulus package — have all been recast as big government blunders, rejected by the emerging majority.

But each of them, in its way, should strengthen the system. The health law will hold costs down, while giving millions the chance at getting care, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Financial reform seeks to prevent the kind of meltdown that caused the global economic collapse. And the stimulus, though it drastically raised the deficit, saved about 3 million jobs, again according to the CBO. It also gave a majority of taxpayers a one-time cut — even if 90 percent of Americans don’t know that, either.

Of course, nobody gets credit for preventing a plane crash. “It could have been much worse!” is not a rallying cry. And, more telling, despite a meager uptick in job growth this year, the unemployment rate rose from 7.6 percent in the month Obama took office to 9.6 today.

Billions of profits, windfalls in the stock market, a stable banking system — but no jobs.

Of course, the big money interests who benefited from Obama’s initiatives have shown no appreciation. Obama, as a senator, voted against the initial bailout of AIG, the reckless insurance giant. As president, he extended them treasury loans at a time when economists said he must — or risk further meltdown. Their response was to give themselves $165 million in executive bonuses, and funnel money to Republicans this year.

Money flows one way, to power, now held by the party that promises tax cuts and deregulation — which should please big business even more.

President Franklin Roosevelt also saved capitalism, in part by a bank “holiday” in 1933, at a time when the free enterprise system had failed. Unlike Obama, he was rewarded with midterm gains for his own party because a majority liked where he was taking the country. The bank holiday was incidental to a larger public works campaign.

Obama can recast himself as the consumer’s best friend, and welcome the animus of Wall Street. He should hector the companies sitting on piles of cash but not hiring new workers. For those who do hire, and create new jobs, he can offer tax incentives. He should finger the financial giants for refusing to clean up their own mess in the foreclosure crisis. He should point to the long overdue protections for credit card holders that came with reform.

And he should veto, veto, veto any bill that attempts to roll back some of the basic protections for people against the institutions that have so much control over their lives – insurance companies, Wall Street and big oil.

They will whine a fierce storm, the manipulators of great wealth. A war on business, they will claim. Not even close. Obama saved them, and the biggest cost was to him.

Eartha Kitt 1957

Eartha Kitt 1962

Eartha Kitt 1981

Eartha Kitt talks about her career and sings a song from her new show Mimi Le Duck.

Remember Me album available in all online stores. Book Nakia Henry at booknakiahenry@gmail.com

2010 Burnside Review Poetry Chapbook Competition

Judge: Matthew Dickman

Winner:

Dear Jean Seberg
Alexandra van de Kamp, Port Jefferson, NY

 

Runner-up:

Adam Fell
An Optional Wilderness

 

 

Finalists:

Moving On, Ben Berman
Stranger Animal, Justin Dodd
The Discards from The Dainty, Lisa Horner
A Girl-thief’s Illustrated Primer, Lo Kwa Mei-in
The Viola Player and Other Poems, Adam Zdrodowski

Thank you to everyone who entered this year’s contest. The high number of quality and publishable chapbooks we received was overwhelming. Congratulations to all our finalists. Alexandra van de Kamp’s Dear Jean Seberg, will be published this winter by Burnside Review Press. She will also be awarded the cash prize of two hundred dollars. Matthew Dickman said of the chapbook, “The poems that make up Dear Jean Seberg are dynamic and human. These lyric narratives remind me of the immediacy found in Diane Wakoski and the daily electricity of Frank O’Hara. In a world often distanced by Facebook and text messages, these poems (these epistles) remind us of the humane, ecstatic, world we live in.”

Until next year,

Sid Miller
Editor

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5th Annual Burnside Review Fiction Chapbook Competition

Judge: Kevin Sampsell

We are sponsoring our fifth annual fiction chapbook competition. Winner will receive twenty-five copies and a two hundred dollar cash prize. Competition runs September 15th to December 31st. Winner will be announced approximately March 1st, with publication date set for summer. The same dedication and care will go into the production of the chapbook as with our journal—quality cardstock cover with photography, linen paper, excellent layout. We will make the publication process as cooperative as possible.

Guidelines

Contest runs September 15th-December 31st.

—Up to 10,000 words of fiction. This can be one longer story or multiple shorter pieces. The writer’s name should appear nowhere on the manuscript.
—2 cover sheets, one with the title of the manuscript, your name, telephone number, and address. The second cover sheet should list only the title of the manuscript.
—A page acknowledging previously published work.

IF BY POST: Include a self addressed stamped envelope and a check or money order for $15- made out to Burnside Review. Entry must be postmarked by December 31st to: Burnside Review Fiction Contest, P.O. Box 1782, Portland OR 97207.
IF BY ELECTRONIC SUBMISSION: E-mail all of above a single Word file to contests@burnsidereview.org. Send $16- by Paypal to sid@burnsidereview.org. Fee and entry must be submitted within 24 hours of each other. Receipt of entry will be send after both arrive. (This method will save money and trees.)

The initial readers of the manuscripts will be Burnside Review staff members. They will choose between five and ten manuscripts as finalists to be passed on to the judge for selection of the winning collection.

We ask that former students or colleagues of the Burnside Review Chapbook Contest’s judge—as well as any writer whose relationship with the judge constitutes an unfair conflict of interest—refrain from entering the contest. The Burnside Review staff reserves the right to disqualify entries deemed conflicts of interest and will return those entry fees.

At no time will the judge have the names of the finalists.

Winner will receive 25 copies of the chapbook printed by Burnside Review Press and a cash prize of $200-.

All questions happily answered by e-mail : sid@burnsidereview.org.

Kevin Sampsell lives in Portland, Oregon, where he run the independent Future Tense Press . His newest book is A Common Pornography (HarperCollins).

complete guidelines available at www.burnsidereview.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Due to a high volume of queries and submissions, we will not be accepting manuscript queries again until further notice. We will update the website when we are again accepting manuscript queries and submissions. If you have already queried us, and we asked you to re-query in a specific month, you are still invited to do so.

Please do not send or email unsolicited manuscripts to the Press outside of the specified reading periods.

 

ANNUAL SHORT SHORT CHAPBOOK CONTEST

Our Fifth Annual Short Short Chapbook Contest submission period begins October 15 and ends December 1, 2010. Our 2010 judge will be Kim Chinquee. The winner will have his/her chapbook published in summer 2011, with an introduction by the contest judge. During the submission period, please email your 25–40 page double-spaced manuscript of short short stories under 1000 words to us here with a $10 reading fee via Paypal or check.

 

 

THE
Gemini Magazine

GRAND PRIZE: $1,000
2nd PLACE: $100
3rd PLACE: $50
HONORABLE MENTION (3)
ENTRY FEE: $5 (up to three poems)
DEADLINE: December 31, 2010
The editors will judge

All Six Finalists Will Be Published in
The February 2011 Issue of Gemini

 

prose poem

ballad

ballade

rhyme

haiku

sonnet

epic

lyric

narrative

cinquain

quatrain

free verse...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doesn't matter what it's called as long as it moves us!
We welcome work from widely published poets as well
as dedicated newcomers. That's the spirit of Gemini
Magazine—no straitjacket, no rules,
everyone gets a chance.

No restrictions on content or length. Simply send your
best

unpublished poems by email or snail mail.

TO ENTER BY EMAIL:

 

1. Click "Donate" and pay                         
the $5 entry fee.                          

("Security code" is on back of credit card; if you didn't
receive confirmation number, transaction
was not processed)

2. Paste confirmation number and unpublished poems
into body of email and send to:

 

 

poetryopen@gemini-magazine.com

NO attachments. Do not include bio—just your poems
and contact info. Enter as many times as you like; $5
fee for each batch of three poems.

6 poems = $10
9 poems = $15
12 poems = $20

 

TO ENTER BY SNAIL MAIL:

1. Mail entry with $5 check or money order payable to
Gemini Magazine to:

POETRY OPEN, Gemini Magazine, P.O. Box 1485,
Onset, MA  02558

(include $5 for each additional batch of three poems)

postmark deadline: December 31, 2010

 

 

Speaking for the Generations: An Anthology of Contemporary African Short Stories

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I just receieved my contributor's copy of this new collection of short stories by African writers. Published in the United States by Africa World Press (Trenton, NJ), the collection contains works by writers from 15 African countries. Going down the Contents pages, I see three writers from Zimbabwe, three from Cameroon, thirteen from Nigeria, four from South Africa, five from Morocco, and so on. I recognize some of the names, and a few are my friends: Eresina Hwede (Zimbabwe), Prince Mensah (Ghana), and Temitayo Olofinlua (Nigeria). In all, there are forty-eight (48) writers in the anthology. Basically, this a collection of African flash fiction since the stories are around 800-900 words long.

The book was edited by Dike Okoro, professor of English and World Literature at Olive-Harvey College, Chicago.

My story is an excerpt from one of my Mukoma stories entitled "A Long Night". The range of issues covered by the stories is wide, but what's more impressive is how the anthology covers both North Afican and Sub-Saharan writing, and the inclusion of both emerging and established authors.

Below are some more details about the book:

This anthology aims to represent the best of contemporary African short stories written in English. Familiar names such as Benjamin Kwakye, Tijan Sallah, Zahra Ramij, Freddy Macha, Arja Salafranca, Odun Balogun, Tanure Ojaide, Jackee Budesta Batanda, Lola Shoneyin, Mohamed Said Raihani and Omar Akikli are present along with the new talent of younger generation which includes Kondwani Kamiyala, Ayobami Adebayo, Prince Mensah, Dipita Kwa, Khadija El Younossi. This book will introduce readers to finely crafted stories or human conditions comparable to those captured in narratives from other parts of the world.

In forty-eight stories that showcase the rich narratives, cultures, and customs of the continent, the reader will become acquainted with both established and emerging African male and female writers. Themes include love, family, relationships, death, politics, exile, childhood, gender, struggle (personal and communal), rage and hope.

“This anthology boasts two major strengths. First, it brings North Africa into a conversation with sub-Saharan Africa as very few such anthologies of African literature have so far done. Second, there is an invigorating freshness about the new talents brought to our attention here as well as an urgency in their reflections on contemporary African and global issues. Dike Okoro should be commended for the imagination he has shown in putting together a collection of stories anyone--student, teacher, or general reader--would love to possess and share with others.”

--Isidore Okpewho, State University of New York Distinguished Professor of Africana Studies, English, & Comparative Literature at Binghamton University

“The stories in this collection clearly capture the changing face of contemporary African societies as they reveal the fears and dreams, the confusion and clarity of the cultures they reflect. While depicted situations in the narratives are often precarious at best, the constant, a hope for a better tomorrow or a better existence, pulses at the heart of these stories.”

 

--Walter P. Collins, III, Ph.D., Associate Professor of French & English, University of South Carolina at Lancaster

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Dike Okoro, poet, short story writer, editor, essayist and critic, has published widely. His creative work and non-fiction have appeared in major journals/magazines/books, including Yellow Medicine Review, Witness Magazine, Botsotso, Farafina, African Writing Online, JALA: Journal of African Literature Association, IRCAL: International Research in Contemporary African Literature, Dictionary of Literary Biography: African Writers Series and Emerging Voices of Post Colonial African Literature. Okoro is the recipient of a Sam Walton Fellowship (2004) and the US/South Africa Education/Research Grant (2003). His major publications include the poetry collection Dance of the Heart and two anthologies of poetry: Songs for Wonodi and Echoes from the Mountain: New and Selected Poems by Mazisi Kunene. He is an assistant professor of English and World Literature at Olive-Harvey College, Chicago.