Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 169

Dickens on Bureaucracy

Just one of many reasons Sir Charles is the greatest writer in English except for Shakespeare.  Here he is on the Office of Circumlocution, ahead of his time, as usual.  Also go here for great Orwell take on him and his greatness and societal impact. Dickens: 

The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.

This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country, was first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had been foremost to study that bright revelation and to carry its shining influence through the whole of the official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving—HOW NOT TO DO IT....

It is true that every new premier and every new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their utmost faculties to discovering How not to do it. It is true that from the moment when a general election was over, every returned man who had been raving on hustings because it hadn’t been done, and who had been asking the friends of the honorable gentleman in the opposite interest on pain of impeachment to tell him why it hadn’t been done, and who had been asserting that it must be done, and who had been pledging himself that it should be done, began to devise, How it was not to be done. It is true that the debates of both Houses of Parliament the whole session through, uniformly tended to the protracted deliberation, How not to do it. It is true that the royal speech at the opening of such session virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have a considerable stroke of work to do, and you will please to retire to your respective chambers, and discuss, How not to do it. It is true that the royal speech, at the close of such session, virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have through several laborious months been considering with great loyalty and patriotism, How not to do it, and you have found out; and with the blessing of Providence upon the harvest (natural, not political), I now dismiss you.

All this is true, but the Circumlocution Office went beyond it.

You Buy It, They Drone It

As you may have heard(or joked) tonight: The Amazon Drone is action...as unveiled on "60 Minutes."  So take it with a grain of salt, obviously...

Greenwald Replies

UPDATE  And now a back and forth on Twitter between Greenwald and James Manley, former top spokesman for Sen. Harry Reid who has just gotten a new job.   Manley today tweeted link to the Mark Ames hit on Greenwald at Pando.  Glenn tweeted referring to Manley's new post: "Revolving door sleaze", noun: disease plaguing Washington & destroying the nation - see e.g. @ JamesPManley  http://t.co/QTHKaZQLsz."     Manley then replied: "and you are a dangerous man. A zealot, full of sanctimonious self righteousness playing a game way out of your league."

Earlier:  Greenwald with lengthy response to Pando's Mark Ames and other critics who have hit him for alleged "profiteering"of NSA leaks after recent work with news outlets.   Just for starters he hits others--such as Josh Marshall--for hypocrisy since they also do work funded by billionaires.  Example:

I have nothing but contempt for the DC functionaries who are cynically embracing that Pando post that holds out the WikiLeaks dump-it-all model as the ideal - the Josh Marshalls and Fran Townsends of the world - as though they would prefer we did that instead. Those are the very same people who hate WikiLeaks, and would be first in line to accuse us of recklessness and likely demand our prosecution if we followed that model (here, for instance, is a CNN debate I did in 2010 with the very same Fran Townsend when I defended Julian Assange after he signed a $1.2 million book deal). 

Marshall just replied on Twitter:  "Notable: this twitter firestorm & @ ggreenwald 's new (as usual misleading) attacks have been triggered by my simply tweeting link to article."  The Ames article.

Greenwald concludes:

Being skeptical and asking questions about any new media organization is completely appropriate. I'm sure I'd be doing the same thing of other new organizations. But we haven't even begun yet. When I moved to Salon and then to the Guardian, I heard all sorts of claims about how I'd have to moderate or dilute my work to accommodate those environments and the interests and views of those who own and run them. I don't think anyone can reasonably claim that happened. And I am quite certain that the same will be true here. The people we work with and, ultimately, the journalism we produce will speak volumes about exactly the reasons we're doing this and why I'm so excited about it.

On Twitter,  David Frum mocked Greenwald for writing at length.  Yes, Frum used just 3 words to shame himself as the author of "axis of evil." 

Train in Pain

Update 11:25   FNDY chiefs confirm four dead and 11 very serious but possibly not life-threatening.  Three of dead thrown out of train.  Some of injured had to be "cut out" of wreckage.  No one believed in water.

Earlier: Major derailment on Metro North train line along the Hudson I frequently take to NYC (rode it every weekday for ten years when I was editing Editor & Publisher).   Local NBC just reported four deaths and maybe 63 injured with 11 very serious (fortunately not that many on train).    One car nearly went into water.  Here's an early CNN report below.  Note: train does not go to Penn Station but to Grand Central.  Amazingly, I had dinner last night very near the site of wreck in Spuyten Duyvil section and my wife and I had wondered how far a walk it was from train station if we took the train next time.   Metro North passenger: “I was dragging along the ground…it felt like an eternity... I was eating rocks.”

Bowie Minus Bing

Okay, on this night in 1977, David Bowie famously sang "Little Drummer Boy" with Bing Crosby on Der Bingle's Christmas special.  But no one remembers what other song he sang that night.  Here 'tis.   Below that: the Will Farrell-John C. Reilly parody.

Turn the Page

Everyone's talking about Russell "Rusty Rockets" new attack on Murdoch and his Sun but don't miss this less-famous hit--from a grassroots campaign formed to get Rupe to change his long-running "Page 3" sexist photos of naked or near-naked women in the paper.  Check out this stirring choir of kids and women and lyrics below.


No equality, no equality while there's Page 3
There's a world of women out there
And you could embrace us all,
But you focus on the body parts
And miss the person's soul
And you just can't see the damage to every girl and every boy
Who see this woman starkly stripped as if she's nothing but a toy..so..(chorus)

Chorus:
You tell me, I can't see, whats the purpose of page three?
What's the point? What's it for? Time to show page three the door.
We need change, why not here? Cos we have to start somewhere,
There'll be no equality while there's page three. 

Girls will learn by imitation
So why impose this limitation
That they'll only gain some clout
If they're prepared to pose and pout,
For the men who leer and shout
"Get 'em off love, get 'em out"
But a woman's not for sale,
And we're here to tell the tale...

No ones asking you to ban it,
Just for you to show some thought,
Murdoch, Dinsmore this aint rocket science,
Its time you really ought to show some common sense,
Some spine,
To turn the page,
To draw a line,
Time your 'stunna' did a runner, you can get your porn online...

Roll Over, Beethoven: Our New Film and Book!

Our Beethoven 9th film just wrapped up full week in L.A.,  Nov. 22-28.   Three screenings in Columbus, OH, starting Dec. 6.  Two-week Chicago runs starts Dec. 22.  I will be speaking at screening in upstate Hudson, NY on Dec. 5--with six more screenings to follow there.

Exciting:  Following  the Ninth was featured on Bill Moyers' national public TV show last week. Already posted online.  Bill calls it a "small gem of a movie"--and "beautiful and powerful"--and presents the entire seven-minute trailer!

After its sold-out premiere at Lincoln Center and week-long run in NYC, Kerry Candaele's unique new film (I am co-producer)  screens all over the USA.    Also set for my hometown Nyack for Jan. 8 where we are planning a special musical celebration.   Also on the slate:  Oklahoma City, Pasadena, KC, Santa Fe, Bridgeport CT, and more.   See trailer below. 

I've also written a book with Kerry, now in print and e-book  editions:  Journeys With Beethoven: Following the Ninth , published by Sinclair Books. It's just $3.99 for the e-book and $10.99 for print.

Reviews of film now appearing.  Very positive review from New York Times, and it appears up front on page 3 of the arts section in print.  "Thrilling... all the film’s segments are smartly assembled and gracefully paced. Oh, and the score’s pretty good, too."

Just got a rave from the Village Voice.   "A majestic sonic travelogue... that rarest of films: a documentary as ineffable and transformative in its reach as it sets out to be."Another good review at Film Journal. "Stirring documentary." Joan Walsh of Salon and MSNBC tweeted: "Saw 'Following the Ninth' last night at Lincoln Center,  go!" Hollywood Reporter: "Persuasive feel-good movie doc.... offers enough spirit-lifting moments to prove its thesis and leave viewers inspired!"

The film follows the Ninth Symphony and its enormous cultural and political influence around the world.  So we travel from Chile during the Pinochet years, to China's Tiananmen Square uprising,  to Japan (for the annual mass singing of the "Ode to Joy") and to Germany with Leonard Bernstein for the fall of the Wall, plus Billy Bragg re-writing the "Ode to Joy"--and playing it for the Queen.


You can write me at:  epic1934@aol.com.    And here's Kerry's terrific trailer:

'Ode to Joy' Phenomenon Grows

Of course, given our new Beethoven Ninth film and book--which explore this very global phenomenon--I have charted here many of the worldwide mass singings and flash mobs of the "Ode to Joy," often in a political context.  Here's the latest, from the Ukraine, just yesterday.

Friday Night Music Pick

Not much remembered Sam Cooke album cut (which Springsteen sort of "borrowed" not too long ago), fantastic "Meet Me at Mary's Place" (his old gospel group the Soul Stirrers backing).  Below that, the other side of Friday night, hanging with your gal or guy.   If you're late to Sam Cooke--you have quite an adventure awaiting you, going back, especially, to the early gospel years.  

Coming on Christmas, Again

Joni Mitchell's classic "River," live 1970.