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by anna missed
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July 22, 2006
All Alone (and in the shadow)
(detail, small)
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Yikes! all alone (and in the shadow) of Charismatic Chaos?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 22 2006 8:07 utc | 1
I was just looking at the Sitemeter stats by location and even though we are only a few who come here, we represent many countries. I come here often and read. Wonderful commentary and great thoughts are absolutely normal and it makes me almost smug knowing that I have found such a place.
I don’t contribute much because I am one of those people Billmon characterised as someone with little to say and not able to say it well.
Most everyone here is very adept at putting forth their arguments. Some however resort to personal attacks and I would like to caution those people that ad hominem attacks are perceived by most as those coming from a loser.
To get back on topic, I suspect the people in the US who are strongly against this latest agression toward Lebanon are alone. Nearly everyone I talk to doesn’t get upset in the least. That does not seem to be the case in Europe where there is much coverage of the destruction in Lebanon. Even the BBC and Sky have given a lot of coverage to the evacuation of Lebanon and there have been many tearful tales told by Brit expats being forced to leave family and friends behind. Another tidbit to come out repeatedly is how the British Navy has to ask permission from the Israelis before they can sail into the port. That can not set well with proud English subjects and the owners of the Sky and BBC have to know that as well. Interesting play going on there IMO.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jul 22 2006 8:50 utc | 2
thanks, dan, for telling us about Euro coverage. Regular updates may help some of us stay a bit saner.
Barfly fave, Paul Craig Roberts is now channeling R’Giap (He’s also gone from one to three pieces/wk.):
Gentle reader, do you know that Israel is engaged in ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon? Israel has ordered all the villagers to clear out. Israel then destroys their homes and murders the fleeing villagers. That way there is no one to come back and nothing to which to return, making it easier for Israel to grab the territory, just as Israel has been stealing Palestine from the Palestinians.
…
Rumsfeld’s neocon Pentagon has drafted new US war doctrine that permits pre-emptive nuclear attack on non-nuclear states.
Neocon David Horowitz says that by slaughtering Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, “Israel is doing the work of the rest of the civilized world,” thus equating war criminals with civilized men.
Neocon Larry Kudlow says that “Israel is doing the Lord’s work” by murdering Lebanese, a claim that should give pause to Israel’s Christian evangelical supporters. Where does the Lord Jesus say, “go forth and murder your neighbors so that you may steal their lands”?
The complicity of the American public in these heinous crimes will damn America for all time in history. The Shame of Being an American
Posted by: jj | Jul 22 2006 9:02 utc | 3
That image from anna missed got me pensive. I thought for a while and asked myself, where are the Phoenicians?
The first written artifacts from the ancient Lebanon tell us about the first known occupants of the land, Phoenicians. As long as 5000 years ago, people known also as Canaanites of the Bible were living here. Ancient Greeks called them Phoenicians. They were living in cities like Byblos, Sidon and Tyre and involving with commercial and maritime activities. These three cities were among the most important port-cities of the ancient times. Tyre was considered to be the most important of the Phoenician city-states. The ancient people of the city built a business empire nearly 3000 years ago. They founded Carthage in the 9th century B.C. and reached the Straits of Gibraltar. They colonized part of Cyprus, Rhodes and the Aegean Islands. They founded Tashish, a great commercial colony, on the coast of Spain. After reaching most remote parts of the Mediterranean region, they sailed around Africa. Starting from the Gulf of Aqaba they returned to Egypt.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 22 2006 9:43 utc | 4
Sorry, just wanted to say, powerful and stellar work anna missed. It’s subtle and surreal and almost photografic like, at the same time. Reminds me of F. Kafka and is quite MC Escher-esqe. I wasn’t sure if it was a photo of a painting, or a painting of a photo. I’m still not sure. But I can live with it. I’m very use to living in flux.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 22 2006 9:58 utc | 5
anna missed
these gifts of yours & others are extremely important to me & i know that is true for other posters
dan of steele & citizen have a great deal to offer – do not be hesitant – the difference in our voices is our treasure
Posted by: r’giap | Jul 22 2006 13:05 utc | 6
This is a photo, right?
Fabulous in any case. I know some don’t give him creds but the colors and dynamic and dramatic use of light and shadow remind me of Jack Vettriano.
I love this, anna missed. Thank you.
Posted by: beq | Jul 22 2006 13:05 utc | 7
Mmm. It’s good. I wonder what it reminds me of, that’s perhaps the point. Interesting.
Posted by: Noirette | Jul 22 2006 13:51 utc | 8
CP, many anthropologists/archaeologists believe that the Phillistines mentioned in the Bible were actually Phoenicians. But irregardless, they were there long, long ago.
Neanderthals lived in the area first. Remember, according to the Bible, the Garden of Eden and Noah’s flood did not take place is what is now Palestine and adjacent areas, such as Lebanon. Those parts of the Bible pre-date Abraham. When Abraham left Iraq and came to ‘the land of Canaan’ (hence Canaanites were there too) there were lots of other peoples already there. The Old Testament repeatedly speaks of the Hebrews battling those tribes or marrying into those tribes (sometimes both), such as in the story of Ruth the Moabite and Goliath the Phillistine.
It’s illogical not to believe the descendents of these tribes aren’t mixed in as Palestinians/Lebanese — which does set precedence for ownership, if how long you’ve been there is the standard. What I have always found interesting is that in Arabic, the word for Palestine is Filastin, and for the Palestinians is Filastini. Now what does that sound like…
Posted by: Ensley | Jul 22 2006 14:00 utc | 9
First cup of coffee. I neglected to compliment Anna Missed for the photo. Interesting how she managed to catch this man’s defensive pose, especially in light of the book he is reading. His legs tightly crossed, one arm clutching his gut and the other stiffly holding the book. Wonder whether he strongly agrees or strongly disagrees with the author. Somehow, I think the latter.
Posted by: Ensley | Jul 22 2006 14:11 utc | 10
anna missed,
Yes very good indeed.
My small brain looks at things simply, probably not as in depth as the man shown.
After reading jj’s #3 comments, I wonder how many (or how much) Americans are to be blamed for the crimes of their country. Certainly there is plenty of blame to be placed. However, I see most Americans as just overly trusting poor souls, believing the propaganda much like old retired people watching TV preachers and then donating to the hypocrites. Besides ignorance, many Americans are struggling to survive themselves, victims of usury practices not much different now than in millenniums past, except now it is combined with our new Global Corporatism. To sit leisurely and explore issues is not in the realm of possible for some, though for most, heaven forbid even the thought of expanding their horizons. Anyways, I just want to say that it is sometimes easy to mass condemn; and as Ward Churchill writings have been discussed on MOA ad nausea, I hesitate to add anything else, but quoting Ward Churchill “…as a U.S. soldier in Vietnam I witnessed and participated in more violence than I ever wish to see.”
… and he did this for what reason of heaven or earth?
On the other hand, when I watch the old black and white films about the German people after WWII, especially those who were forced to clean up the rotting dead corpses from the abandoned concentration camps, the indignation of many of those German people having to do such work astounds me to this day. The depravity of human beings never ceases to amaze me.
Posted by: Rick Happ | Jul 22 2006 16:37 utc | 11
Anna missed,
It strikes me like a perfect time capsule picture. Years from now, one could look at it and see in it contained all the tense, potential energy of a traumatized era staring straight at the thing, and somehow too petrified to scream, or fight, but still maintaining the effort to keep looking at it, the horror.
As if that were the best we could manage till we finally had seen too much. Sometime not so long after this picture….
It’s tempting for me to blame the man for doing so little, but what words could I say that might help?
Posted by: citizen | Jul 22 2006 23:19 utc | 12
in a strange way – or it might simply be the fact that i’m strange i see edvard munch work here – that scream that ends the film of pier paolo pasolini’s ‘theorama’
Posted by: r’giap | Jul 22 2006 23:27 utc | 13
Under my skin
pictures are getting under my skin and wracking my nerves. Billmon’s baby with the head blown off is too much for me. The soldier holding the baby is too much for me.
And I am not the only one. An entire generation of people is seeing these pictures – and even if the mass media in the US won’t play them many people see the pictures online. This generation too is unmooring from its elders
So which wave will swamp the free rein given by these United States to our most sadistic criminals? Will the economic piracy tear us down over a sudden few months? Will war on three fronts unite our former allies into enemies and bystanders, and our soldiers get chewed up like the Japanese troops stranded all across unfriendly Asian countries in 1945? Or will it be Sir, No Sir first? Will our military bang rather than whimper? I don’t know.
For mercy’s sake, some crisis is coming. And in the meantime I work my corner of it all so that some larger part of my human world is not entirely dead in the heart. Do what you can.
Posted by: citizen | Jul 23 2006 1:10 utc | 14
It is a color photograph — and the guy sat there ramrod straight, oblivious, and as motionless as tree leaves on a hot summer night, weird.
Channeling Robert Frank I suppose.
Posted by: anna missed | Jul 23 2006 6:03 utc | 15
does anyone besides me see a resemblance to scooter libby in this photograph? anna missed, you have captured a metaphorical moment. the subject, so riveted to “charismatic chaos” and so alone and oblivious to the world around him he seems frozen. the intensity of his concentration bathed in the red of the shadows is like a burning pocket of fury in the commonplace of a ferry ride on a summer day. through the windows you see the blue of the water, the coastline beyond, and its reflection on the water’s surface. and within what could be the scene of a pleasant daily or weekend commute this rigid, absorbed man rooted to his book. it may be that he is holding the book up to his face to block the sunlight from his eyes, but one gets the sense that it is a defensive posture. makes me wonder – defensive against what? the simple world around him? scares me. very disturbing and intriguing photograph.
Posted by: conchita | Jul 23 2006 15:11 utc | 16
The lines of the bench slats, like jalousies, converging and drawing one’s eyes into the singular negative space defined by book, arm akimbo, and head. The lines, again, convergent and parallel, as in Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” representing the desperate logic of inescapable events. The symbolism of film noir, but drenched in post-realist color. The fiery orange of sunset, a traditional time of ease, and the open windows giving way to blue seas and verdant isles, all belie the self-contained tension and isolation of the mysterious chiaroscuro figure. And the figure itself: head of a Greek God, attire of a businessman, posture of a mime. All a study in contradiction. The shaded head: shame or Everyman? Why the missing sock? Madness of Chaos? The “V,” like an arrow from the Gods, intersecting the skull. The confusing perspective of De Chirico, along with his Mediteranean pallette.
The subject is too centered for Frank, not quite freakish enough for Arbus, too stolid for Cartier-Bresson; yet, certainly possessing more psychological depth than all of those. Touche.
Posted by: BMOC | Jul 23 2006 22:37 utc | 17
the passenger looks slightly disheveled (lack of tie, socks, shave, comb), as if coming down from a binge or, perhaps, having just narrowly escaped from the clutches of some cult. not wanting to be recognized or manipulated by outside agents, he adopts a defensive, closed-off posture. the book becomes a prop, sheilding his eyes from the brilliant sun that now illuminates his escape, and shutting off any possible interaction w/ the world around him. (who actually reads a book in that manner?) run, dude, run.
Posted by: b real | Jul 24 2006 14:56 utc | 18