Today, I had a chance to see Geert Wilders’ so-called movie, Fitna. Apparently, it came out during my Easter pilgrimage to Bucovina.
If you haven’t seen Fitna, play it below.
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Almost a month ago, I said this about Geert Wilders. That was before Fitna was released. Below is my reflection after the release of Fitna.
Although the short video clip (let’s not call this a movie, shall we!) does not seem as contentious as Wilders’ politically incorrect manner of speaking and writing, Fitna exaggerates problems, misunderstandings and concerns with an oily, underhanded, used-car salesman’s approach – and a very sophisticated mastery of subtle, misleading suggestions.
Background music for your reading pleasure: Radiohead, Creep. Play it below.
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What this video clip (Fitna) provides is a compelling opportunity for plain clothes Europeans (not academics of the ivory towers) to evaluate the tenets of political correctness, multiculturalism, and cultural relativity. Europeans must answer some big questions for themselves. For example, do these ideological constructions (political correctness and multiculturalism) adequately reflect the things needed to further pursue the course of human freedom within the context of European cultural identity and aspirations?
Unlike Americans, Europeans have never been ones to allow their freedom of speech to be regulated by the self-proclaimed, American-imported demagogues of political correctness.
Americans, however, remain bound by a Christian humility and humanism AND a Victorian sense of correctness and virtue. These things derive from our European protestant roots and the English-Victorian influences that came to define the aspirations of the American middle class. In other words, certain forms of social thinking and action are built-in in America and make it difficult for us to succeed in any kind of critical re-examination.
MLK, Jr., for example, would never have moved the European heart. Europeans, in general, would have never have accepted his accusations of complicity to the degree that they would feel personally compelled to overcome their own sense of bigotry and racism. This, however, does not mean that European civilization is somehow inferior to American civilization. What I hope to illustrate by this example is that MLK, Jr. represents a dogma which leads Americans to certain conclusions to which Europeans are not bound. Read the rest of this entry »
If you missed part one of my Easter Pilgrimage To Bucovina, go here. Part four follows herein.
Last Night
Last night, I tried to get through this recollection, but it didn’t happen. That reminds me…
Last week, you [moby] mentioned that you were going to a seminar where Petr Janata, a cognitive neuroscience professor from UC Davis, was going to be speaking.
moby wrote:
“i’m having a seminar/conversation with neuroscientist petr jenata at the rubin museum in nyc… come down and talk about the brain with us.”
You never mentioned how it went.
I found Petr Jenata’s website. It states there that he uses “music as a model system for studying the neural basis of auditory attention, imagery and memory.”
Some background music: moby, We’re all made of stars.
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Also, I checked out the sxsw spin interview video. Quick impression: another uninspired, interviewer along for the joy ride of kicking it with an unassuming, soft-spoken A list celebrity.
Will you ever find a hardcore interview where the interviewer can actually engage you at your intellectual level?
If you missed part one of my Easter Pilgrimage To Bucovina, go here. Part three follows herein.
Last year, about this time, you [moby] did some gigs in Europe. You gonna make the same rounds again anytime soon?
Let me know when you’ll be in Madrid. Hopefully, sooner than later. I’d like a good reason to hang out there. I have some friends there that I’d like to see too.
Below, a little background music: yello, ooooh yeah:
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Easter Sunday
Sunday was a long day. I wasn’t feeling well. Taking pictures of the moon in the freezing night did something to me. Nonetheless, we visited the Romanian orthodox monasteries of Putna and Humorului as well as St. Mary’s in Cacica. We looked forward to a sumptuous feast for dinner. In the morning, Aurelian of Casa Antonio had gone to the shepherds to slaughter and quarter a lamb.
View of the rear of St. Mary’s church in Cacica
The feast at Casa Antonio would begin with a traditional lamb-based meatloaf. Next came a sour lamb soup thick with lamb fat and garden vegetables. Then, Aurelian brought out the big guns: a massive lamb shank that had been boiled in liters of wine. We ate greedily and made lots of whimpering sounds after we had over-filled our bellies.
We went out to do some night photography, again. And there was a light rain. Unfortunately, there was no moon in the early evening. The temperature was near freezing (5 degrees celsius) and I think I pushed my luck. Perhaps, there was too much cloud cover for a moon when we went out. Finally, I did see a moon from the window in my room about 4am.
Around 2am, I decided to go for another bowl of sour lamb soup. Aurelian wasn’t sleeping and he was glad to warm up the ciorba for us. That was a bad idea. I loaded it with sour cream and fresh, crushed garlic paste. And I ate it with bread smothered with sour cream and garlic paste. The garlic put an unstoppable fire in my belly. And not just mine. Read the rest of this entry »
If you missed part one of my Easter Pilgrimage To Bucovina, go here. Part two follows herein.
moby writes:
“oh, we’ve also put up the new album [Last Night] in its entirety on my myspace page (and it might be elsewhere on myspace, i’m not sure).”
Hear Last Nighthere (warning: product may contain peanuts, based on Schrödinger’s paradoxical thought experiments using quantum superposition).
Thanks, moby. Have a great weekend in Miami!
BTW, I think removing the forums was a great idea. Don’t cave to the mob of angry trolls. Comments to your journal should be sufficient to keep your website personalized and almost Web 2.0ish.
Below, a little background music: moby, Whispering Wind:
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St. Mary’s Church in Cacica
In a small Romanian village, I stood in an old church in the freezing cold. I stood shoulder to shoulder with the villagers. They were strangers to me. These people spoke another language, they worried about things which I did not worry about, and given the opportunity on any other occasion – most of them would be trying to sell me a square meter in their village for a preposterous amount – like nothing less than a million dollars.
Maybe, I exaggerate. But not by much. Been there. Done that.
And, yet, here we were in the same place and time, contemporaries, doing the same thing and not trying to get the better of each other. We were expressing by our very presence in that church, a desire (more or less) to be involved in something bigger than ourselves, bigger than our worries and everyday concerns, and bigger than our differences and our personal self-interest.
Standing there, I felt a strange community with these strangers as I reflected on the resurrection of Christ and anticipated a hot bowl of sour soup. Read the rest of this entry »
Below, a little background music: moby, One of These Mornings:
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Easter Vigil in Bucovina
After an eight hour drive, I arrived at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Cacica (Kaczyka in Polish) just as the Easter Vigil service was getting started. Having fasted, I was looking forward to the late night supper waiting for me at Casa Antonio’s hostel-pension in Solca: ciorba radeautian– a traditional Northern Romanian soup. And since it was so cold (3 degrees Celsius), I hoped to find a warm bed too.
Yes, there is a website for the church in Romanian, Italian and Polish. Go here– if you can read any of these languages.
Below, my humble, fleeting gift to you: a listen to Enya, We are free now…
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Good Friday
moby writes:
“This weekend in acapulco, i’ll be dj’ing, not playing live. just want to make that clear. same thing is true in miami. at some point in the next few months i might play live again, but for now i’m happy to just be a bald beer drinking dj.”
For some, today is Good, Holy or Great Friday- the day to remember Christ dying on the cross. Today is the day that the Roman Catholic Church has designated the anniversary of the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The date of Good Friday changes every year. But I don’t know how they pick the date. Anyway, I stopped at St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Bucharest. There were long lines to the confessionals. Read the rest of this entry »
A friend shared a story with me that made me deeply feel the significance and importance of the oral arguments that I reviewed regarding District of Columbia v. Heller. I had to share it with you. Fortunate for us… the kind author, Victoria Lloyd, gave me permission. I’ll admit this: I was so excited about this personal story that I waited eight hours to find out who the author was and how to get in touch.
Below, a little patriotic clip, in case, you can’t continue without video.
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Or, background music from Janis Joplin and Woodstock (Try)… for your reading:
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Number Sixty Four
by Victoria F. Lloyd
It was six o’clock in the evening on the Seventeenth of March when I drove by the United States Supreme Court to scout the line of people that had gathered on the sidewalk. They were strewn about in an unkempt line starting at the base of the marble steps of the court. I could see several people dining on Armand’s pizza and a delivery man with bags of Chinese food being paid by a young man bundled in a sweatshirt, jeans, and a North Face jacket. It was clear that these people were in for the long haul. Read the rest of this entry »
Reaffirming the Second Amendment does not mean we should not discuss the problems of violence in our culture or the tragedies and horrors that we have observed in our schools, streets and low income neighborhoods. As Americans, we are smart enough, creative enough and passionate enough to find compelling solutions that do not infringe upon our obligations and rights as Americans… and as prominent an important members of an international community.
Below, a trailer for a documentary on the Second Amendment:
Below, Clip from Bloomberg News (November, 2007): David Tice, Fund Manager for Prudent Bear Fund said stock market would decline 50-60%.
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Next Steps
Over here in Europe, economies seem to be responding positively to a flat income tax. That’s the official story. We are told that when corporate profits are unburdened by heavy taxes, the money goes into things like employment, consumption and investment in innovation. In other words, the money keeps moving.
Russia went to a 13 percent flat tax on personal income in 2001 and some economists claim this facilitated the recovery of Russia’s economy without the help of the oil boom. Slovakia was the first to adopt a 19 percent flat tax on corporate and personal income. Romania followed with a 16 percent flat tax on corporate profit and personal income.
In the United States, the Republican and Democrat parties have not made any serious commitment to the concept of flat taxes. Jerry Brown (D) and Steve Forbes (R) were among the only presidential candidates (1992 campaigns) to forcefully advocate such a sweeping tax policy change. Generally speaking, Democrats and Republican seem to be stuck in a way of federal spending that only allows them to think about slightly raising and slightly lowering taxes.
The problem remains, however. How do we support and encourage small and medium size business start ups and growth in order to get the money moving again in now-vulnerable middle class circles? Getting American money moving again in the right places is one factor among several that are needed to turn around a global economic downturn.
Below, background noise for reading: David Gahan (of Depeche Mode), Kingdom:
moby is writing a lot more these days. His new album, Last Night, is about to be released for sale. Several singles from Last Night are out there on the internet. Here’s some links…
Ok, I feel bad that I haven’t written to moby in two weeks. I’m sorry, dude. Iarta-ma.
I’ve been a little busy.
I’m trying to work out something interesting for the Yahoo! advertising guy in Romania. His name is Mihai Fanache. Despite Mr. Fanache’s ADHD, he rocks for a 20-something entrepreneur. With the support of the mysterious Orlando Nicoara, he came a long way from being just another talented, hardcore young guy out of Targoviste.
Below: Lou Reed, A Walk On The Wild Side
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Dude, do you feel irreversibly contaminated by your celebrity life?
I continue to ponder your interview statement… that celebrity is a “corrosive” institution?
What’s it like… not to be anchored to ordinary reality with a 9-5 job?
What’s it like… not have to put up with people you don’t like, eight hours Monday through Friday?
Do you lose basic social skills and sociable perspective?
For example, does your contempt for nuissiants (nuisances and insouciants) get so out of hand (for lack of having to interact with them)… so much so that you just fade them into the background noise?
Did you get crunk with the new dawgs at the disco, last night?
Posted by Stan Faryna 
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