Black Hawk Down

Finally saw Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down, which came out in 2001, after 9/11. I don't know what to think about it. Scott makes impressive epic films, and this is certainly epic in showing modern urban warfare, more comprehensively than Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987). The visuals and sound effects are superb. Furthermore, the 1993 street warfare and chaotic battle scenes in Mogadishu, Somalia (a city larger than Detroit), portend urban fighting in Iraq, only without the IEDs and suicide bombers.

This film dovetails perfectly with a book I just finished and will post about soon: James Hillman's A Terrible Love of War (2004). Black Hawk Down is based on Mark Bowden's 1999 nonfiction work, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War.



Today's Rune: Possessions.

The Clintons Bounce Back -- Again

I. Bill Clinton went to North Korea, met with Kim Jong-il, secured the release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee and then brought them back to the USA -- Bill Clinton as diplomatic pop star.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Somalia's Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed (previously, commander of the Islamic Courts Union) in an effort to shore up his moderate Islamic government against the more fundamentalist Hizbul Shabaab / Al-Shabaab insurgency. Overall, a much wiser approach than the Bush one, which was to give a green light to Ethiopian invasion in 2006 (the Ethiopians withdrew in ultimate failure earlier this year). The ever-resilient Clintons are back in the limelight!


II. On the way to Austin, Texas, in late December, 1992, I drove through Little Rock and Hope, Arkansas: after the election, but before the Clintons moved into the White House. It was an exciting time, and there was a lot of hubbub around the Governor's mansion in Little Rock. Bill Clinton signs had already sprouted in "a Town called Hope," which if memory serves, had a Pizza Hut and a few other amenities at the time.

III. Obama has obviously learned from the Clintons' experiences, and he's been smart enough to call on them for service. The Republican opposition once again tries to block a progressive agenda, only this time, Republicans are weaker and more fragmented. The so-called Rainbow Coalition is larger now, with more college youth, African Americans and Latinos registered and voting Democratic than ever before. Good! This time around, health care reform has a much better chance of becoming a reality, perhaps by October 2009.

Today's Rune: Joy.

As Long as the Grass Shall Grow

Was thinking about Jim Thorpe and Ira Hayes the other day, and the 1964 Johnny Cash album, Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian, including Johnny's version of Peter La Farge's "The Ballad of Ira Hayes." There's another haunting song on the album, co-written by JC and Johnny Horton, "The Vanishing Race." Even the song's title is eerie. Let's not forget an interesting take on the Little Big Horn called "Custer."

My father's been reading about the Comanche, who are now concentrated in Oklahoma and around the Southwest, and we've discussed some of their history, which has been enlightening.

During the Medicine Lodge Treaty negotiations in 1867, Comanche Chief Ten Bears, made these statements (published in 1910 by the US Government), which pretty much sum up the impact of mid-nineteenth century pressures on the Comanche:

[T]here are things which you have said which I do not like. They were not sweet like sugar but bitter like gourds. You said that you wanted to put us upon reservations, to build our houses and make us medicine lodges. I do not want them. I was born on the prairie where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no [e]nclosures and where everything drew a free breath. I want to die there and not within walls. I know every stream and every wood between the Rio Grande and the Arkansas. I have hunted and lived over the country. I lived like my fathers before me, and like them, I lived happily.

When I was at Washington the Great Father told me that all the Comanche land was ours and that no one should hinder us in living upon it. So, why do you ask us to leave the rivers and the sun and the wind and live in houses? Do not ask us to give up the buffalo for the sheep. . .

If the Texans had kept out of my country there might have been peace. But that which you now say we must live on is too small. The Texans have taken away the places where the grass grew the thickest and the timber was the best. Had we kept that we might have done the things you ask. But it is too late. The white man has the country which we loved, and we only wish to wander on the prairie until we die. . .

Today's Rune: Partnership.

You Keep Samin' When You Ought To Be Changin'

Fashion is a funny kind of thing. Take the navel: banned from public view in the USA until the mid-to-late 1960s; still banned from view in some places. Nancy Sinatra's Sugar (1966/1967) album cover was banned in Boston for indecency when it came out. But napalming villages in Vietnam was a-okay at the time.

I'm not suggesting the mores of society are entirely hypocritical, just noting they're bizarre and inconsistent. Personally, I'd rather navel gaze than watch a village razed.

Which reminds me of what Kurtz says in Apocalypse Now! (1979): "We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes because it's obscene!"

Jeannie C. Riley sings Tom T. Hall's "Harper Valley PTA" (1968).

Today's Rune: Signals.

Hotter Than a Pepper Sprout

You may know it from Johnny Cash and June Carter, either studio or live via At Folsom Prison (1968). Here's a 1967 version of the Leiber/Wheeler song, "Jackson" aka "I'm Goin' to Jackson," performed by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood. Wives, don't forget your "Jaypan" [Japanese] fan . . .

Today's Rune: Movement.

Love is All Around: Everybody Must Get Stoned, Hanged, or Burned at the Stake

Jan Hus, burned at the stake in 1485.* The question is: should anyone be put to death by vested authorities? Or rather, is it ever really ethical or moral so to do?

Given recent beheadings and other global forms of capital punishment, it's pretty sickening. On the other hand, who wants to support keeping people like Charles Manson alive for decades? Tough question. Either way, we fall short. We seem to be a half-assed sort of species.

Today's Rune: Defense. *Triggering the Hussite Wars.

Carcassonne and the Albigensian Crusade

Here's a straight, no chaser version from the Catholic perspective, of the Albigensians/Cathari, a Christian offshoot that grew in the 1100s-1300s and was especially strong in what is now southern France:

The Cathari and the Catholic Church

The Catharist system was a simultaneous attack on the Catholic Church and the then existing State. The Church was directly assailed in its doctrine and hierarchy. The denial of the value of oaths, and the suppression, at least in theory, of the right to punish, undermined the basis of the Christian State. But the worst danger was that the triumph of the heretical principles meant the extinction of the human race. This annihilation was the direct consequence of the Catharist doctrine, that all intercourse between the sexes ought to be avoided and that suicide or the Endura, under certain circumstances, is not only lawful but commendable.

Weber, N. (1908). "Cathari," in The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved August 1, 2009 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03435a.htm

The officially blessed and sanctioned Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) suppressed the Cathars and brought the region under stronger French influence. Carcassone was one of the fortified cities taken, and then expanded under new management. It's still intact. I was happy to spend a fair amount of time there in the 1980s. Amazing to walk through the labyrinthine streets and spaces, something very rare to see in the USA as of 2009.



Today's Rune: Fertility.