USA out of NATO/No More NATO [2022)

Google.

When did Soviet Union collapse?

December 26, 1991.

Wikipedia.

Vladimir Putin.

Retired as a KGB Lieutenant Colonel on the second day of the 1991 Soviet coup attempt against Gorbachev.

August 20, 1991.

“As soon as the coup began, I immediately decided which side I was on.”

One can assume that Putin was against the pro-communist coup.

As for Gorbachev.

Gorbachev the reformer.

Putin was on the same side as Yeltsin.

Which explains what happened next.

But we need to back up.

May 1990.

Putin starts working for the mayor of Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) as an advisor on international affairs.

So Putin was working for both the KGB and the mayor (Anatoly Sobchak).

Approximately one year later, he became head of the Committee for External Relations for the mayor of Leningrad.

June 28, 1991.

He was still in the KGB.

Putin held this job until 1996.

Remember when Putin retired from the KGB.

August 1991.

Concurrently, Putin was first deputy chairman for the Government of Saint Petersburg.

He assumed this role in March 1994.

About one year later, he organized the Saint Petersburg chapter of Our Home – Russia: a pro-government political party.

May 1995.

It was a liberal party.

It was founded by Viktor Chernomyrdin.

Pro-government. And liberal.

Remember, Russia had just gotten finished with being a communist country.

So the previous form of government was radically (totalitarian) liberal.

Putin was a legislative election campaign manager that same year.

For the next two years, he was leader of the Saint Petersburg chapter of Our Home – Russia.

1995-1997.

Sobchak, the Saint Petersburg mayor for whom Putin had begun working in 1990, lost his reelection bid.

Putin had been in charge of the reelection campaign.

At this point, Putin resigned his positions within the Saint Petersburg government.

He moved to Moscow.

He began working for Pavel Borodin as deputy chief of the Presidential Property Management Department.

June 1996.

Putin remained in this position for approximately a year.

March 1997.

Yeltsin, with whom Putin had sided in the failed August coup of 1991, hired Putin to become his deputy chief of staff.

March 26, 1997.

Putin held this position for about a year.

May 1998.

He also was the chief of the Main Control Directorate of the Presidential Property Management Department.

His tenure there lasted slightly longer.

June 1998.

This position was an important one.

Both his predecessor (Alexei Kudrin), and his successor (Nikolai Patrushev), wound up in positions of prominence and also worked with Putin later in their careers.

Putin successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in economics at the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute.

June 27, 1997.

His thesis advisor was Vladimir Litvinenko.

Putin then succeeded Viktoriya Mitina as First Deputy Chief of the Presidential Staff “for regions”.

May 25, 1998.

Two months later, he succeeded Sergey Shakhray as head of the commission for “delimitation of power” agreements “of the regions” and head of the President’s federal center.

July 15, 1998.

Putin soon-afterwards, by appointment of Yeltsin, became head of the FSB: the successor to the KGB.

July 25, 1998.

Here’s where our story gets interesting.

And here’s where the current Ukraine war started.

The Czech Republic (AKA Czechia) [a former signatory of the Warsaw Pact] joined NATO.

Hungary [a former signatory of the Warsaw Pact countries] joined NATO.

Poland [a former signatory of the Warsaw Pact countries] joined NATO.

March 12, 1999.

Approximately five months later, Putin became acting Prime Minister of Russia.

August 9, 1999.

The Warsaw Pact was a mutual defense organization like NATO.

The Warsaw Pact ceased to exist on July 1, 1991.

When did the Warsaw Pact begin?

May 14, 1955.

When did NATO begin?

April 4, 1949.

The Soviets created the Warsaw Pact (CoMEcon) IN RESPONSE to the actions of NATO and the West.

So surely NATO dissolved after July 1, 1991, when the threat of the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist, right?

Oh, they didn’t.

Well, then surely NATO ceased operations at least when the USSR ceased to exist on December 26, 1991, right?

Oh, they didn’t take that opportunity for peace either, eh?

Are you fucking telling me that NATO, instead of disbanding and toning it down, INCORPORATED COUNTRIES FROM THEIR FORMER ADVERSARY (CoMEcon AKA the “Warsaw Pact” countries) INTO THEIR FUCKING “MUTUAL-DEFENSE ALLIANCE”?!?

Yes.

That’s exactly what NATO did.

Just five months before Putin first rose to the Prime Minister position in Russia.

1999.

22 years ago.

22 years ago NATO first began to BORDER RUSSIA, right?

[because Poland borders Russia]

No, actually.

NATO began to border Russia in 1949 (!) with the joining of founding member Norway.

Russia was patient.

It was only six years later (1955) that Russia (the Soviet Union) decided to make a proportionate riposte and create the Warsaw Pact zone IN RESPONSE to NATO.

So when Poland joined NATO in 1999, it became the second country bordering Russia to do so.

NATO has been on Russia’s doorstep since 1949.

And NATO set up a fucking tent on Russia’s doorstep in 1999.

Fifty years later.

NATO, if they were really about “defense” and peace, would not have taken this provocative action.

Yeltsin wanted Putin to be his successor.

And so Putin ran for President.

Putin had become Russia’s fifth Prime Minister in 18 months.

The State Duma overwhelmingly-approved this: 233 in favor, 84 against, and 17 abstained.

August 16, 1999.

Putin was an unknown outside of Russia.

He had only briefly been the head of the FSB.

Most intelligence analysts expected him to go the way of the four Prime Ministers who came before him (in a mere 18 months).

Yeltsin was sick.

He unexpectedly resigned.

And Putin became Acting President.

December 31, 1999.

Putin won an early Presidential election.

March 26, 2000.

He was inaugurated.

May 7, 2000.

Life came at him fast.

The Kursk submarine sunk.

August 12, 2000.

Another crisis arose two years later with the Moscow theater hostage crisis.

October 23, 2002.

Putin was elected to a second term.

March 14, 2004.

Here’s where “peace-loving” NATO stepped in again.

Bulgaria [a former signatory of the Warsaw Pact countries] joined NATO.

Estonia [a former Soviet Republic bordering Russia] joined NATO.

Latvia [a former Soviet Republic bordering Russia] joined NATO.

Lithuania [a former Soviet Republic bordering Russia] joined NATO.

Romania [a former signatory of the Warsaw Pact countries] joined NATO.

Slovakia [a former signatory of the Warsaw Pact countries] joined NATO.

Slovenia [a former part of communist Yugoslavia] joined NATO.

March 29, 2004.

Wow.

So NATO, instead of being satisfied with expanding NATO by two countries in 1999 (and bordering Russia with two members), decided to expand by a further SEVEN (!) countries (giving them FIVE members that border Russia).

The provocativeness of this cannot be understated.

Russia does not have a mutual defense treaty with Canada.

Because Canada is in NATO.

And Russia does not have a mutual defense treaty with Mexico.

Indeed, Russia no longer has nukes in Cuba.

It is approximately 230 miles from Havana, Cuba to Miami, Florida.

The world almost ended in October 1962 because of this kind of proximity.

230 miles.

And how far is Tallinn, Estonia (a part of NATO since 2004) from Saint Petersburg, Russia?

Approximately 230 miles.

Look it up.

Don’t take my word for it.

Google.

Havana to Miami.

And.

Tallinn to St. Petersburg (in miles).

Are there nukes in Tallinn?

Probably not.

But there are NATO forces in Tallinn.

And in Estonia.

NATO was on Russia’s doorstep for six years (since 1949) before the Warsaw Pact even existed .

NATO pitched a tent on Russia’s doorstep in 1999 with the accession of Poland.

And then NATO effectively started brandishing weapons on Russia’s doorstep with the accession of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 2004.

What would you do if someone was on your doorstep?

You ask questions.

You find out their name is Norway and they’re in a gang called NATO.

They say, “if you mess with me, then my gang will declare war on you”.

Pretty unsettling.

But you let them hang out and loiter on your doorstep for fifty years.

After fifty years, they bring a friend named Poland and set up a tent on your doorstep.

They are there, every day and every night, sleeping in their tent and cooking on their camping stove.

They leave their trash everywhere.

They act like they own your doorstep.

You cannot leave your house by your front door.

You have to go out of your garage.

Or through your backyard and out the side gate.

Five years later, Norway and Poland (NATO gang members), bring their gang buddies Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to live in the tent on your doorstep.

It’s getting crowded in that tent!

But this time there’s something even more unsettling.

These gang members are brandishing automatic weapons.

They have hand guns.

Every time you look out your peephole, you see the five people on your porch.

And they are heavily armed!

That is where Putin was at in 2004 when he began his second Presidential term.

Since then, NATO has added:

-Albania [a former signatory of the Warsaw Pact] in 2009

-Croatia [a former part of communist Yugoslavia] in 2009

-Montenegro [a former part of communist Yugoslavia] in 2017

-North Macedonia [a former part of communist Yugoslavia] in 2020

East, east, east.

Always east.

Ever eastwards!

NATO is the gang on Russia’s porch.

It started with Norway loitering and saying, “mess with me and you mess with my gang”.

For fifty years Russia let punk Norway hang out and brag about their gang.

After fifty years, Norway and their buddy Poland (another NATO gang member), set up a tent on Russia’s porch.

Day and night.

Norway and Poland talking shit about how their gang would fuck Russia up.

Russia used to be in a gang.

Two, actually.

Russia was the kingpin of both of them.

The capo.

NATO are crips.

CoMEcon (Warsaw Pact)/USSR were bloods.

The bloods have ceased to exist.

Their gang has been broken up.

The bloods (Russia) even made their colors red, white, and blue: same as USA and France (two of NATO’s founding members).

The bloods have taken on the ways of the crips.

The bloods are a defeated gang.

But that’s not good enough for the crips.

The crips want to push their face into the pavement and grind it.

In 2014, with five armed gang members living in a tent on their porch, Russia decided to start going in and out of its own front door again.

They invented a curse word.

Russia invented a curse word.

The word is/was, “Crimea!”

At first, the gang members were shocked that the homeowner (Russia) had grown a pair of balls.

And then every day it happened.

Russia would emerge from its front door.

The gang members would brandish their weapons and say, “why don’t you try something?”

The gang members would say, “this is our porch now, motherfucker!”

And Russia would just say, “Crimea river!”

Russia would go out to the mailbox.

Russia would enter and leave through its own front door.

For eight years Russia has been doing this.

Refusing to be prisoners in their own home.

But last year a new little shit named Ukraine started hanging out in the tent on the porch.

And Ukraine said, “We’re gonna prevent you from saying, ‘Crimea river!'”

Russia said, “How are you going to do that?”

Ukraine said, “I’m gonna fuck you up if you say, ‘Crimea river!'”

Russia asked, “Are you in this NATO gang?”

Ukraine replied, “Well, not yet. But I want to be. And I’m gonna join as soon as possible.”

This last reply was in the fall of 2021.

There was a new shit on the block: Ukraine.

And Ukraine wanted to be the badass.

Ukraine wanted to make sure that Russia could no longer enter and leave through its own front door.

But Ukraine made a threat.

Ukraine said, “As soon as I get into NATO, I’m gonna fuck you up the first time I hear the words, ‘Crimea river!'”

Russia finally decided to do something.

Russia thought, “Ok, I can’t fight these five gang members living with automatic weapons in a tent on my porch. There’s too many of them. But I cannot go back to being unable to enter and leave through my own front door. So there is only one solution. I must fight the one who is threatening my freedom. I should be able to enter and leave through my own front door. And these gang members let me do that. I can even tell them to go fuck themselves and get away with it. Because I’m polite. I just say, ‘Crimea river!’ But now the time has come. I cannot tolerate little shit Ukraine telling me that he is gonna restrict my movement and my speech ON MY OWN FRONT PORCH! This little comedian shit has made his intentions known: as soon as he joins the NATO gang, he is gonna have them fuck me up in colossal manner anytime I exert my ownership of my own house. As soon as I go out to check the mail and they heckle me. As soon as I respond with a relatively-tame, ‘Crimea river!’, Ukraine is gonna sic the entire fucking gang on my ass. So that is the final straw. I can’t fight the whole bullshit gang of thugs, but I can fight the little shit. And I must fight him before he gets into the gang. Now is the time. Do or die.”

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7uPO4cFjoSPnnQozEoZKfx?si=e8b7838d8f924d2e

-PD

Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain [2001)

Today is my 40th birthday.

And it gives me pause to reflect.

On the many wonderful things I have done and seen.

And on the mistakes I have made.

This film, in particular, brings to my heart a specific apology.

And yet, I know not how to find the wonderful young woman who first showed me this film.

I doubt she is reading.

But I pray that my thoughts will bounce off the moon…and find her happy in Paris…or Aix-en-Provence.

But Amélie, as we call it in America…is full of beaming positivity.

And so we shall push on.

As much as we wouldst remain in this quicksand, we push on.

Perhaps it’s loneliness.

And certainly an overactive imagination.

But some of it is the absurdity we found in that Québécois masterpiece Léolo (1992) by director Jean-Claude Lauzon.

We can stay at home.

Far from the maddening crowd.

The crowd.

Vidor.

Irving Thalberg.

Thomas Hardy.

But we yearn for excitement.

We yearn to feel the blood pulse in our veins.

To “lose the fear” as The Boo Radleys sang.

Best,

how many waitresses we have fallen in love with.

Hard-boiled eggs in the highlands.

Robert Burns.

Don’t close your heart.

Leave open.

Rube Goldberg might dislodge a wall tile.  And a world beyond…

Éclairs sur l’au-delà…

Do good things.

As if you were an angel.

A spy for God.

Making miracles.

Ellen Andrée…the girl drinking the water…in Renoir’s painting.

Pierre-Auguste.

Must clarify, not Jean…extolling Bazin.

Everything secretly.

One hand not knowing what the other is doing.

QWERTY.

X.

You have a mission to bring happiness to those around you.

Hippie bumper stickers call it “random acts of kindness”.

And I wholeheartedly approve.

Send the gnome to Nome.

Ponder jurassic orgasms from far afield or near (15+1).

And let out some steam for modesty’s sake.

Stratagems befitting Technical Services in thrall to love…forgery for romance.

Time machine.

Nothing some Twinings tea can’t age.

And the gaslighting which is currently being employed straight from Alinsky’s Rules against pizzagate researchers…turn the beat around.

Knowing John Podesta founded the Center for American Progress…under the aegis of which Mind Wars was written by Jonathan D. Moreno.

We have on good faith that US spec-ops use this very book.

So that Mr. Podesta should not be at all surprised by a little blowback.

Neuroscience neuroscience neuroscience.

And the funding and methodology of trolls suddenly makes sense.

Yes, Amélie is an expert in psychological warfare.

But only as a last resort.

AND, most importantly, she is sticking up for the undefended.

Jamel Debbouze.

It’s impressionist binoculars vs. covert telescope.

Good-natured.

But only she holds the key.

To Ellen Andrée.

And to the ghost.

Who seeks to repair the collective memory.

“Don’t forget my face”, she posits.

But love is the ultimate job.

The ultimate reward.

To find another like yourself.

To be accepted.

To find the lock for your key.

And vice versa.

It is cat and mouse.

And Zorro.

And Audrey Tautou is magnificent.

She is a jewel in a world created by director Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

So tender.

So halting.

We feel “the time-image” of which Deleuze wrote.

Love is too strong.

Like staring into the sun.

Too forceful.

Like a full moon.

But luckily Mathieu Kassovitz knows his proverbs.

And that “made all the difference”.

Early on one frosty morn’.

Simply put, Amélie is an undeniable masterpiece.

That only the hard-hearted could look down upon.

 

-PD

Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut [1956)

I wanted to write last night, but the Internet fell asleep.

This is one of my favorite films ever.

But I needed to rewatch it.  As I always do.  Every movie.

Real fear.

Real danger.

A long project.

Extracting yourself from the superjail.  The prison planet.

A Man Escaped.  We have it easy in English.

But witness the fullness of the French title.

It speaks to care.  Rope.  Hooks.  Months.  Of planning.

And it all started with a spoon.

Tin nor aluminum will do.  Neither.

We must wait for iron.

Steel?

Iron.  Hardness.

It’s World War II.

Today.  World War III.

And for the CIA, World War IV.

Chemists.  Physicists.  And now mathematicians.

Computer scientists.  Statisticians.

No, that’s post-War.  Japan.

But for now we are locked in a room of our own making.

If we can only get through the door.

tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap

tap tap tap tap

tap tap tap tap tap tap tap

Which isn’t to say, taps.

We must succeed at this chess game.

Playing against an adversary with few weaknesses.

Multiple layers of defense and surveillance.

Doors and locks and gates and bars.

And silence.

It is the silence which will betray us.

And so, Dr. No, we must slip our shoes off for a little putting practice.

It is a real battle.

CIA vs. FBI.  Refereed by the NSA.

NGA vs. NRO.  Chantilly lace vs. a pretty face.

A girl and a gun.

ASIS vs. DIGO.  Or dingo.

Rich.

ASCAP vs. BM.I

But let me back up to the kebab organization known as SHISH.

Apologies to Belgium.

But it is worth noting SV/SE vs. CSIS/SCRS.

Scissors.  Suckers.  A scissor.

A pair of scissors.

He would need more leverage.  The most overused word in business.

And as meaningless as “innovation”.

What they mean is “interesting”…that’s innovation.

And by false flag, “not what it seems”.

Dear NEADS in Rome (NY) uttered collectively the phrase of Baudrillard’s lifetime:

“Is this real-world or exercise?”

But we have remembered it as simulation.

Going over his escape a million times in his head.

With poor reconnaissance.

Except the dead would-be escapee.

“He’s practically free.”

“No one’s practically free.”

Jessica Lange, incredulous.

But she’s not in this movie.

She’s headed to Roswell.

Named after Yale graduate Roswell Rudd.

A little town in New Mexico.

Out of time.  Mind.

CSE vs. GCHQ.  Or CSEC.

An animal with five eyes has no competition.

Within himself.  The owls are not what they seem.

Fifth wheel.  Hokey pokey.

Valuable antipodes.

And RCMP vs. FBI.  Horses.  Or moose.

Hippopotamus.  POTUS.  Not amused.

DND seems incorrect.

What was Fontaine in for?

And Jost?

DIPOLCAR.  Position.

MSS vs. RSS.  Seems so simple.  Really simple!  And so complex.

Pledged ΚΥΠ.

But the division.

ÚZSI vs. UZI.  Sounds dangerous.

With PET we get to canned milk or breaking wind.

A lovable Lego intelligence agency.

Of one.

Just one?

KaPo vs. capo.  Vs. ligatura.

Hitchcock’s rope vs. Bresson’s rope.

For this is Robert Bresson.  The movie.  Under consideration.

SUPO vs. sumo.

But we really get fired up by DGSE.

And it’s only appropriate.

DGSE vs. BND.

The only war which has ever been fought.

Das Fenster vs. la fenêtre.

The most delicate element of escape.

A crack in the breeze.

SIN vs. voodoo of all sorts.

GRLS.  Girls?  Gorillas?  Scalded ape?

When you need headache relief quick.  Choose BAINTELKAM!

A Buddhist temple with a surrounding population 95% Muslim.

Amazing.  Elton John.

MOIS.  Ooh…  Now we are getting serious.

Putting the me in month.

And of course “the Institute” (moving alphabethically).

Lisping along.

How will you project your escape.  Like Desargues.

And Poncelet.

The movie camera.

Go directly to jail.

Whale song matryoshka.

AISE.  Must be the coolest.  Standard issue Ferraris.  And meals in Modena.

Like Matthew Broderick’s brief moment of cool in Election.

Gid Tanner and his Skillet-Lickers…coming to the Kingdom of Jordan…real soon.

SREL.  Sreally?  That’s SRAL.  Like SalvaDali.

CISEN as sí señor.

Not quite hermeneutics.

FIB vs. SIN.

PST.  Masters of recruitment.

And FOST vs. SIE.

The big daddy ISI vs. ailleurs.

The canal of SENIS.  Central American zipper.

Could have been Lake Nicaragua.

AW 🙂 Georges Sand approaching Chopin with flowers.

He was a woman.  Mr. Sandman.

SIRP vs. usurp.

SVR vs. GRU. [now we’re making some sense]

And DEVGRU vs. GRU.

GIP is priceless.  One letter from perfection.

VOA vs. VOA.

NISA vs. NASA.  And the incomparable skills of PIS.

In joint operations with SENIS.

CITCO vs. Citgo.

Must it be?  It must be.  It MUST be.

And back to our MI6 and DIA and ONI.

These are the thoughts of a man in jail.

Where having a pencil is punishable by firing squad.

And so he builds his hope on escape.

From the mundane.

He is a true soldier.

Though he be stripped of any recognition.

Wisdom is that final step.  On a journey which started with mere data.

 

-PD

Paisà [1946)

Something about the late night.

And a war movie.

Makes me tired of fighting.

The ongoing war.

Identify:  friend or foe?

The Italian partisans were fighting against their own fascist government.

They were fighting against the Nazis.

This will be a little late in coming, but an idea can have a soft opening.

Applied Memetics.

Memetic engineering.

We bombed Sicily.

Clear the beaches.

A daughter-in-law (it is implied) was killed by our bombs.

Boom boom.

And now she cannot even have her wake in peace.

She was an egg for a larger omelet.  That should be remembered both ways.

Disgusting.  And no other way around it.

Warfare in 1943.

Is it a road?

No, it’s lava.

So many misunderstandings in war.

I’m an American.

Me.

The author.

It is the country of my birth.

And I love my country.

The partisans were fighting the fascists.

The fascists were the outgoing government.

More clearly, I defend the pillars.

Free speech.

Push the limits.

USE your free speech.

Get the word out.

Be wrong.

Apologize.

Try to get it right.

Study science.

Drunk in Naples.

Thinking of DeFord Bailey.

Born same day as me.

Harmonica Frank.

Ain’t talkin’.  Just walkin’.

You gonna have to eat those boots if you lose them.

Which is a contradiction.

Maria Michi was such a bitch in Roma, città aperta.

You remember?

We she comes face to face with torture???

And so the OSS fought with the partisans.

Training in explosives.  And survival.  Every possible scenario.

Basics.  Navigation of small boats.

Because poetry is always dangerous.

You might analyze an entire Yankees season in two minutes, but I am large vast, I contain mul,ti,tudes,,,

Improved upon by the collective unconscious.

What?

Well, Maria Michi redeems herself here.

Still a whore.

But a heart of gold.

Straight from central casting (as Webster Tarpley might say).

I believe it was The Thrills.

Love in vain?

Two lights…diverged in a forest…AC/DC

I alternate between direct and oblique.

That was Rome.

Most notable for war is Florence.

The Rucellai gardens…ah.

I haven’t heard that name in a long time—

Wan excrement.

Nick Tosches.

We take up Machiavelli to study war.

Because there is something worth defending.

As faded as it is.

Over five-hundred years ago…they were already lamenting.

It’s nothing new.

What Sean Elliott correctly calls curmudgeon talk.

Will Harriet Medin taste youth one more time?

Because the great painter-warrior seems to be in danger.

Across the Arno.

Putting the Po in poverty.

Lou Reed became Transformer.

The Wolf.  Lupo.

Call me Winston.

That Rosser Reeves should have died in 1984.

Better living through chemistry.

Thank God for mental illness.

Tonight I’m gonna rock you tonight.

Second request.

Uffizi with crated antiquity.

A more high-dollar GoldenEye.

Impenetrable.

We always rebel against our kind.

Youth.

The imperfect circle of mimesis morphed.

And meme.

Daddy-O.

Like watercolors one bleedingintotheother.

Which we would have called word painting for J.S.  In a cantata.  Or oratorio.

Wasn’t a “years of lead” scale attack.  Uffizi.  1993.

But we seem to trace the progression of honorable men (OSS) to bizarre hydra (CIA).

Short sword for thrusting.

To each, his own.

The British (like the Catholics) are portrayed as spoiled twats.

[The Catholics (director Rossellini being Italian) are portrayed lovingly as myopic outliers]

Shakespeare would have been appalled by Shakespeare in Love.

And right before the “Fine” a noyade.

Viz. know your history.

I am guilty as hell.

Of being an idiot.

But I have a lust for life beneath this quiet desperation.

 

-PD

Airplane! [1980)

My congratulations to Hulu for finally making a move in the right direction as regards comedic movies.

This is a chestnut from my youth.

Directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker, this endless stream of one-liners hits some very special notes indeed.

[flying on instruments]

Ted Striker has a drinking problem…

His aim is off.

It dates back to when he was stationed on the island of Drambuie [sic].

He led the strike against Daiquiri.  We’ll be coming in low…beneath their radar.  Attacking from the north.

[when will you be back?  I can’t tell you that.  It’s top secret.]

Yes, his postwar record is even worse than his war record.

I know the feeling.

Leaves his cab with the meter running.

Striker is always coming in too hot.  Robert Hays.

World record for sweat.

But at least he has his Elaine for whom to hope.  Julie Hagerty.

Avoid the brown acid.  And the fish.

But if you do need a doctor, just look for someone perpetually wearing a stethoscope.

Leslie Nielsen.

Plays it straight as a javelin [donnnnnngggg!].

The cavalry trailing Kramer.

But back to Leslie…from Regina, Saskatchewan.

[Municipal bonds…AA rating…best investment in Canada]

Extremely underrated is Peter Graves as the pilot:  Clarence Oveur.

On the ovarian trolley.

[Have you ever seen a grown man naked?]

and

[Do you like gladiator films?]

or

[Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?]

And of course, the man himself:  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

{on this night when my Spurs fell a point shy to the Thunder}

The NBA’s all-time leading scorer (38,387) is Roger Murdoch.

I previously wrote about Kareem’s turn in the Bruce Lee “almost” Game of Death.

Airplane!, then, was his second appearance on the big screen (and first since his kung fu debut in 1972).

Lloyd Bridges picked the wrong week for everything.

All the vices.

From a fag to a swig to bennies to some genuinely Ramones shit.

{now I’m gonna have nightmares about Westbrook}

[How ’bout some coffee?]

[…never has a second cup of coffee at home.  …never vomits at home.]

Robert Stack checks in like Gregg Popovich after a meal at Taco Bell.

[That may have been the lousiest landing in the history of this airport…]

But the absolute secret weapon is the flamingly-gay Stephen Stucker as Johnny Henshaw-Jacobs.

[it looks like a big Tylenol]

[a hat, a brooch, a pterodactyl]

Stucker’s contribution is still alive (though he sadly passed away in 1986 at the age of 38).

And so the queen act was no act.

AIDS.

Shit…

[golly]

June Cleaver speaks jive.

Joey Hammen (Ross Harris) went on to have a very interesting music career which saw his path intersect with Beck, Stereolab, and The Dust Brothers.

[Odelay!]

David Leisure and Kawhi Leonard both went to San Diego State University.

That should definitely help us in Game 3.

But we’re going to need a lot more defense from Ethel Merman.

Really, the Spurs need to revisit this excellent tome by Joel Cohen:

dynomite

No library focusing on military strategy is complete without it.

From Jomini to Clausewitz to Winshield Wiper Man:

if he can just manage to get the hood back down on the Boeing 707 after checking the dipstick.

No need to commit hara-kiri, James Hong.  Just filed under “seppuku”.

It’s 1-1.  Go Spurs Go!

 

-PD

Senso [1954)

How does love turn into hate?

Does it ever work the other way around?

Hate into love?

Because the natural course seems to be love into hate.

Vulnerability into hurt.

Hurt into resentment.

And somewhere along the continuum, God forbid, revenge.

Senso, despite its extravagant period costumes and generous budget, is still a product of neorealism.

Sure…it’s hard for most of us to relate to a Countess.

That’s why I can’t read Tolstoy.  I can’t read Fitzgerald.  Not even out of curiosity or hatred.

I can only read Dostoyevsky.  I have only ever related to the outlaw.

Of outlaw literature.

But cinema does a funny thing.

We may not be able to really “get into” Il Trovatore or Der Freischütz, but occasionally a talented auteur can make us appreciate the truly foreign:  a higher social class.

In this case, it is the highest.

The nobility.

In English we might (but probably won’t) know it as the Third Italian War of Independence.  How confusing.  That would seem to entail a July 4th (for us Americans) three times a year (assuming there wasn’t a fourth war).

In plain terms, it was Austria vs. Italy (rather like a soccer match).

Football.  Footie.  FTSE.  Yes…

All rather humdrum after the smoke has wafted away.

Idiots, they call us.

Those who fight.

Some join an army.  Very brave.

Others expose themselves needlessly.  What might be termed “impulsive” or again “thoughtlessness”.

What does this?

In both cases, pride (generally speaking).

Sure, a professional soldier makes a decent living (as long as he or she is living), but said soldier is a chess piece of one type or another…always manipulated from above…lacking autonomy.

And yet, perhaps, no price is too high to pay people who are willing to die to defend their country.

But we must define country.

Defending those who cannot (for one reason or another) defend themselves is indeed honorable.

Defending the abstract structures and mechanisms of a state, perhaps less so…

And yet, a pride can infuse the defense of all of this (either separately or collectively).

And then there is the rebel.

Perhaps the rebel will never again find his army in the first world.

In terms of class warfare, then, the United States is a frozen conflict zone.

Just like Abkhazia or some other little-talked-about blip on the map.

Is there a class war?

Should there be a class war?

Shouldn’t wars of all kinds have been evolved out of existence long ago?

Yes?

No…the rebel shan’t find his army in America.

The battlefield has changed.

And as bathos is my witness, “love is a battlefield”!

Discourse on Benatar.

Cannot contain the dodo on his perch.

But never does Luchino Visconti stoop to such poor taste.

No.

Fever pitch, yes.

But poor taste, never.

Because he is telling Spengler’s story.

And he is still telling WWII.

There can be no avoiding that.  Nine years later.

It must be couched in allegory.

And I, like Baudelaire, am nourished by my own misery.

All of this I owe to Walter Benjamin.

Avoid the jalapeno pronunciation.  ~ath do us part.

Alida Valli gets to show more of her breadth here than in the criminally underrated Paradine Case (no pun intended).

Pennies and “the” will be eliminated from the verbal money supply.

Farley Granger is more of a maniac than in Rope (the Hitchcock closest to my snob heart).

Most importantly, Visconti sets the mood with Bruckner’s 7th Symphony.

And now Carlo Maria Giulini’s recording for Deutsche Grammophon makes more sense.

Senso in what sense?

Direction?

Love leaves you with a worthless compass.

The sun begins to revolve around the Earth.

What a perilous pleasure.

That we hope for forever until our end of days.

No matter the hurt…always more.

For the romantic.

 

-PD

The 39 Steps [1935)

Oh, to be a spy.  At once the dream of the adventurous and the curse of the actualized.  Why?  Why does Robert Donat let Annabella Smith come home with him from the music hall???  Perhaps it is her allure…  Her strange foreign accent.  Once you take the first step, the case collapses to become a chute…a slide.

Perhaps Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) was simply curious.  We know how the cat ended behaving thusly…

Perhaps Hannay was horny?  It was, after all, 1935…things were lightening up a bit.  No Tinder, but still…one might luck out at the music hall.

Well, Hannay has the misfortune of true cloak and dagger.  Annabella Smith…Hannay asks if she’s ever heard of persecution mania?  Yes, a good question until she comes stumbling from the kitchen with a knife in her back.

And so Hannay sees her fears materialize before his very eyes.  Sure, she could have stabbed herself in the back, but it’s not bloody likely!  And what’s this?

Her last words…cryptic…and a map of Scotland clutched in her hand.

Hanney has become a believer.  It is that moment when hypothetical (suppose she’s right?) becomes, to a certain extent, proven.

No time to split hairs quibbling…she makes it clear with her last breath:  they killed me and you’re next.

Why trust?  Perhaps the spy becomes tired.  She is, after all, a mercenary in a foreign country.  Yes, she is protecting the Kingdom, but for a price…  Her homeland is elsewhere.

And so an act of transference occurs.  Robert Donat now bears the burden of a secret…a hint of a secret…a trail.

He has a couple of choices.  The decision he makes ends up saving his life, yet it is completely counterintuitive.

He decides to get the hell out of there.  Annabella Smith is dead on the bed.  Hanney makes a deal with the milkman (1935) and creeps off towards the train station.

To Scotland.

Things begin to go very hard for Mr. Hanney.  He is pursued relentlessly.  A daring escape from a train stopped on a bridge brings him eventually to the Scottish moors and the village circled on Annabella’s map.

On the way he must overnight with a farm couple…  The man of the house is an overbearing null…the woman, an angel trapped in an unhappy provincial cage.

This is really the beginning of the James Bond idea.  In 1935, they shared but a kiss.

Now, if you have made it this far you will be spared further spoilers…because that is not the purpose of my site.  This isn’t Cliff’s Notes.

We must talk of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States.  Perhaps you have noticed the news element of my homepage?  It is really not fair to criticize our CIA…it is too easy.  There can be no doubt as to the difficulty of their work.

As a citizen of the USA I have dreamed of being a secret agent…just as many people do.  It would be a treasonous dream for me to wish employment by the MI6.  I am not British.  So my thoughts have turned now and again to my own country’s external intelligence organization.

Oh, I am too old to be a covert agent…too out of shape to have a fistfight with a Daniel Craig type.

But we remember certain things from our readings.  Wall Street = CIA.  This was Michael Ruppert’s assertion in his excellent book Crossing the Rubicon.  May Mr. Ruppert rest in peace.  No doubt he tried to do the right things during his time on this earth.  It was not until recently that I learned of his death.

Perhaps I began studying business as a roundabout way to court adventure.  There is no doubt that my future is not on Wall Street.  In fact, I don’t see much future at all.

Why?  Because I am like Robert Donat’s character in this film.  I can’t leave well-enough alone.  Killing in self-defense or in the defense of others can be honorable, but stretched to its limits by tenuous connection it eventually becomes murder.  When I read about the leading intelligence agencies of the world, I get the whiff of murder.  I get the scent of those who are “just following orders”…just like those good little Nazi soldiers.

It is this thirst for justice which makes me unemployable.  I know it.

And so I soldier on.  I do my cardio.  I lift my weights.  I study my texts.  I enrich my mind.

I am just a loner with my films.  I would like to contribute, but I was born of no prestigious family.  I don’t speak Dari or Pashto.

There are two camps of which I wish to be part of neither.  Camp one holds that everything America does is just and good. Camp two holds that nothing America does is just nor good.

I do not wish for a clean slate.  It is not possible.  Those who wish for the collapse of society are fools.  They are wishing for their own death and are far too optimistic about the practicality of starting over.

Now, dear film lover…you must be asking what this has to do with The 39 Steps.

Mr. Memory.

Office of Strategic Services.

Office of the Coordinator of Information.

Robert Sherwood.  movie critic.  Vanity Fair.  Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley.  Algonquin Round Table. Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent.  Hitchcock.  Yes, it is a tenuous link.

Continuing…

Admiral John Godfrey.  “M”

Centre for Spastic Children, Chelsea.

…and finally

William Stephenson (c’est-à-dire) James Bond

the Icelandic orphan

alluded to in Casino Royale (2006)

to wit

British Security Coordination

Camp X (Whitby, Ontario) [the original Farm]

Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl

Rockefeller Center (35th and 36th floors of the International Building)

under the cover of British Passport Control Office

For better or worse, CIA is MI6.  Where does one stop and the other begin?  To what extent is this a private army for the corporate members of the Council on Foreign Relations (Royal Institute of International Affairs)?

Surely we’re all playing by the Chatham House rules here, aren’t we, gents?

-PD

Way of the Dragon [1972)

1770.  Beethoven.  Dragon.  If my math is correct.  I was born in the year of the dragon.  Hour of the dog.  For dragon, I will own eccentric.  For dog, sense of justice and lazy.  Bruce Lee was born in the year and hour of the dragon.

Strong.  Intestinal fortitude is usually used figuratively.  Early in this film we might be disoriented by the clumsy, blurred  mise-en-scène.  Indeed, this was Lee’s first and last completed directorial effort.  The beginning doesn’t bode well.  Just like his character, who accidentally orders five bowls of soup, Lee seems in over his head as an auteur.  As his character Tang Lung deals with a seeming case of the shits, the film moves (on the contrary) very slowly.  Not only do we wonder about the technical proficiency of the cinematographer, we experience a claustrophobic hyper-sensitivity to the passing of time.  Mercifully, this is offset by a cinematic tone which echoes Tati’s Playtime.

But the strength builds up.  The film, literally, comes into focus (albeit slowly).  Lee once again plays a similar character to those he delineated in The Big Boss and Fist of Fury.

You must put your hip into it, he says.  Yes.  This is the secret to power.  Leverage.  Chinese boxing.

We are made aware of Lee’s strength on several occasions when he flexes his taut physique.  Suffice it to say that there is nothing slight about the diminutive Lee.  One senses that every square inch of this man is power.  Strength.

Proud.  Nothing is like back home.  Hong Kong.  Rome doesn’t impress Lee.  On one occasion he seems to see things through the eyes of Respighi for a moment, but then makes a flippant comment about a grand fountain.  Tang Lung (Lee) would build over it.  Make money.

But this façade is at odds with the loyalty he shows to his newfound friends in Rome (themselves likewise expats from Hong Kong).

Direct.  Lee begins to direct.  There is a panache in all of his movements…like a lethal Chaplin.

Eccentric.  Can I buy a gun around here?  Yes?  Good.  I’ll whittle some bamboo darts instead.

He moves in squawking orbits.  Distractions.  Diversions.  Like Muhammad Ali with Tourette’s.

Show off.  More like a selective extrovert.  Beware of the quiet ones.  The humble ones.  When they reach their breaking points, God forbid they be the most genius asskickers on the planet.

Lee refrains until his adversaries ask for it.  Backed into a corner, he turns the tables…every time.

Arrogant.  Sometimes…  It takes a Chuck Norris to remind us that there are other masters in the world.  And if we beat them, we salute them.  But he who seeks not money shall have a superior core to the mercenary.  To protect is more powerful than to attack.

Violent.  Damn right!  You want violence?  You’re about to be dealt the quickest administrations of pain you’ve ever seen.  Calling Dr. Lee.  This is where shock and awe comes from.  And machinery/technology will never ascend to the glorious depths of human creativity.  Endurance is in the mind.

Brash.  Occasionally.  The big boss needs to learn.  The big boss hires his murders–his terrorism–his intimidation.  The big boss runs and hides when the fast bullets fly.  But once in awhile the masters of war find themselves in very uncomfortable circumstances.  The teacher does not love war.  The teacher masters war.  The teacher masters the passions of revenge.  Bruce Lee never distributes a disproportionate riposte.

Controlling.  Control.  First, control yourself.  Seek to master yourself.  Listen to your body.  Control what you can control…knowing that the world is chaos…an indeterminate harmony.  Then you will be ready to think on your feet.  You will be ready to invent and improvise like Thelonious Monk.

This is the way of the dragon.

-PD