Then today - what a day for films on TV - by wonderful serendipity I changed channels and there was Zorba The Greek, just as it started. What joy - one of my favourite films - and another life-affirming one. Sadly I've been too like Basil (Yes and too like the Fawlty Towers one too sometimes :-)):

Alexis Zorba: Damn it boss, I like you too much not to say it. You've got everything except one thing: madness! A man needs a little madness, or else...
Basil: Or else?
Alexis Zorba: ...he never dares cut the rope and be free."

Well, I did cut the rope, took early retirement from university and came to France - there was more than a little madness in that.

But while joyous the film is certainly not bland - I prepared something to eat during the scene where Irene Papas is killed (though I don't think Zorba would have turned his back and let her walk behind him through that crowd). It's also a horrible scene where the French woman dies and the old women (mainly) steal her things, no wonder the Cretans weren't happy with Michael Cacoyannis, the director (and I now see that he died just last year). But, for all his tenderness towards her while alive, Zorba is unsentimental when she dies: "Silly old bitch. She's not alone, she's with Suleiman Pasha having a hell of a time."  Then the joyful wisdom (Nietzsche) of the final dance on the beach.

Then "Dangerous Liasons" - intelligent, but too full of DSK-style decadence, though even the apparently cynical can really suffer in love (Glenn Close).

More joy - "Dead Poets Society" another favourite, of course I identify with Keating (Robin Williams): "I always thought the purpose of education was to learn to think for yourself." Apparently while the film was being made Williams was only involved for about three weeks; the young actors playing the boys saw the director, Peter Weir, an Australian, as their Keating figure.

"Carpe diem" - but "Sucking the marrow out of life doesn't mean choking on the bone." It's a delicate balance - like dancing.

Place Massena, Nice. André Massena was not exactly a man of peace and goodwill:

Masséna remained one of Bonaparte's most important subordinates throughout the extraordinary 1796-7 campaign in Italy. He played a significant part in engagements at Montenotte and Dego in the spring. He took a leading role at the battles of Lonato,Castiglione, Bassano, Caldiero and Arcola in the summer and fall, and the Battle of Rivoli and the fall of Mantua that winter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Mass%C3%A9na

"All this kitsch stuff is only temporary - I'll just sit it out."

I like these decorations which have a non-religious, almost astronomical look - above left the moon and Jupiter.

The moon and Jupiter.

No, not that biblical "virgin".

Place Garibaldi - he helped unify Italy so that nuts like Mussolini and Berlusconi could take over - and then Goldman Sachs.

"Down this mean streets a man must go" - who needs a late drink in Nice in December

Steve Jobs Regretted Wasting Time on Alternative Medicine  BY RYAN TATE

Everyone else wanted Steve Jobs to move quickly against his tumor. His friends wanted him to get an operation. His wife wanted him to get an operation. But the Apple CEO, so used to swimming against the tide of popular opinion, insisted on trying alternative therapies for nine crucial months. Before he died, Jobs resolved to let the world know he deeply regretted the critical decision, biographer Walter Isaacson has told 60 Minutes. (NB for Americans, to be on CBS Sun Oct 23).

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7385390n

http://gawker.com/5851835/steve-jobs-regretted-wasting-time-on-alternative-medicine

The Occupy campaign may have hoped, at its launch, to inspire similar action elsewhere, but few can have foreseen that within four weeks, more than 900 cities around the world would host co-ordinated protests directly or loosely affiliated to the Occupy cause.

"Five unions, including the CFDT and the prominent CGT syndicate, the two biggest groups, organised about 200 street rallies and strikes across France against President Nicolas Sarkozy's budget-cutting measures.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/11/uk-france-strikes-idUSLNE79A04D20111011

Though described as "low-key" by Reuters, it was a big demo taking about an hour to pass, but it had no violence, and unlike Brit demos wasn't flanked by police:

Grayson quickly clarifies for O'Rourke why they're there, in beautifully succinct point-by-point form.

Grayson: Let me tell what they're talking about. They're complaining about the fact the Wall Street wrecked the economy three years ago and nobody's held responsible for that.

Not a single person has been indicted or convicted for destroying twenty percent of our national net worth accumulated over two centuries.

They're upset about the fact that wall street have iron control over economic policies of this country and that one party is a wholly owned subsidiary of wall street and the other party caters to them as well, that's the truth of the matter as you said before. And…

O'Rourke: Get the man a bongo drum, they've found their spokesman!

Grayson: If I…

O'Rourke: Get your shoes off, get a bongo drum, forget where to go to the bathroom and it's yours.

Grayson: If I am the spokesman for all the people who think

we should not have twenty four million people in this country who can't find a full time job.

That we should not have fifty million people who can't see a doctor when they're sick.

That we shouldn't have forty seven million people of this country who need government help to feed themselves.

And we shouldn't have fifteen million families who owe more on their mortgage than the value of home, OK, I'll be that spokesman.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/econ-101-alan-grayson-schools-pj-orourke

December in Nice

First a few (belatedly) from the Paris Meetup in September:

George Monbiot

"In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured; they may well be essential to survival."

Noam Chomsky

I really wish somebody else had put forward some criticism of ThatBritGuy's mish-mash of unsupported, often inaccurate assertion and inflated claims, arrogant dismissals of others and incoherent "argument" in "Malleable social reality". This grew (once again) from a comment and took some time, it covers a wide range of issues, so I've put it up as a diary.

A banner to confuse even French-speaking Americans

"What do you mean you don't feel retirement is really relevant ?"

Models ? Retire at 62 ! - ha ha

Students add certain jeunesse sais quoi.

Nice place to take a break from agitation.

 ... or see things from a different perspective - on Nietzsche's terrace:

"Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter."

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

This started as a couple of comments responding to ThatBritGuy, but I've spent some time trying to make sure that I have got things right regarding the views of Rawls and about recent changes in Cuba which Krugman probably had in mind, while also considering how Chomsky might be a better model. So this has grown in length (considerably !) and I've made it into a diary.

I think that Chomsky's general approach would provide a better model since he isn't concerned to develop elaborate, abstract ideas about basic values, nor about the nature of society and politics. He's quite sceptical about claims to expertise in such areas and hence encourages us to subject experts' arguments to critical examination:

Recently my favourite French philosopher, Michel Onfray, wrote a very critical book on Freud, "The Twilight of an Idol: The Freudian Plot"  (a reference to Nietzsche's Twilight of the idols, and Onfray adopts Nietzsche's idea that a philosopher's ideas reflect his own life). Such strong criticism  of Freud is a bit of a rarity in France, where Freud is still widely respected - taught in the philosophy BAC, and apparently Freudians dominate about 70% of academic psychiatry departments. Even someone as independent and critical as Onfray had decided not to read an earlier collection of articles critical of Freud - "The Black book of Psychoanalysis" - on the basis of early comments about it. Subsequently one of its authors, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, helped open Onfray's eyes to the less than edifying truth about Freud.

Predictably there were very critical responses from the Freudians, but the level was lamentable (well, if you still respect Freud ...), including that from celeb intello Bernard Henri Lévy:

front-paged by afew

Christian Salmon, a French academic, has written a serious treatise on Kate Moss: "The Kate Moss Machine":

...  Through this success story of this English "girl-next-door" he studies the coming to age of a collective myth in an age of triumphant neo-liberalism: Kate Moss seems to him an incarnation of flexibility, nomadism and transformism - the key ideals of Nineties neo-management. In Kate Moss's emaciated and mobile body, he discerns the shape of an uncertain, precarious, flexible and even "liquid" subject that reigned from the beginning of the Nineties until today's economic crisis. In this sense, Kate Moss heralds the end of an area and the dawn of a new one.

http://www.yodawork.com/webcc/sog_dec/notice_reference.html

That's fine, I like the intellectual orientation in French culture, even if it does tend to sound rather grandiose to British ears. But the more down-to-earth facts about her are rather grim in some ways; her role in driving grown women to try to look like skinny waifs, part of "heroin chic", was as negative as her life-style is unhealthy:

Supermodel Kate Moss was "discovered" at 14 by Sarah Doukas of the Storm Modeling Agency, while she was passing through JFK International Airport on vacation with her parents. She is 5-foot-7 and weighs an estimated 100 pounds, perhaps a few pounds less, though she says she never weighs herself. Through the 1990s and early 00s, she was one of the world's most recognizable models. Moss starred in a series of Calvin Klein ads through the 1990s, spurring a period of waify "heroin chic" in the modeling world, which emphasized emaciation and de-emphasized breasts. Moss was photographed with utterly blank face, as if stoned or exhausted. Klein reportedly paid her £1 million a year, until her contract was not renewed in 1999, "by mutual agreement."

Also in 1999, Moss said publicly that she had never walked any fashion catwalk sober, "even at ten in the morning". In 1998, she was hospitalized for exhaustion; in 2000, for a kidney infection; and in 2003, a sleeping disorder. She is a vegetarian, and smokes upwards of 80 cigarettes daily.

http://www.nndb.com/people/489/000022423/

The fashion industry is a product of international capitalism, not French culture, and is always looking for new gimmicks and ways to shock to get attention in a cut-throat commercial world. In the 90s we had the "heroin addict" look, but a death within the industry caused some concern - not exactly soul-searching, you can't search what isn't there, and produced promises to be more "upbeat":

A Death Tarnishes Fashion's 'Heroin Look' By AMY M. SPINDLER Published: May 20, 1997

After years of denial by the fashion industry that heroin use among its players had any relation to the so-called heroin-chic style of fashion photography that has become so prevalent, the fatal overdose of Davide Sorrenti, 20, a promising photographer at the heart of the scene, was like a small bomb going off.

Even if it was a bomb detonated in the home of the person making it, it didn't dispel the impact. The period of denial is over. Magazine editors are now admitting that glamorizing the strung-out heroin addict's look reflected use among the industry's young and also had a seductive power that caused damage. And three months after Mr. Sorrenti's death, the magazines that published his work and have served as catalysts for the look are declaring that they are going to move on, with a more upbeat mood that will be visible in July issues.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/20/style/a-death-tarnishes-fashion-s-heroin-look.html

Well, maybe "upbeat" doesn't sell fashion goods. The manufactured frenzy of change so often involves cannibalising the past - again:

Fashion is a business that has always been uncomfortably dependent on its past. Designers look to long-gone decades for inspiration. Businessmen are constantly digging for the next dusty, defunct label to resuscitate in hopes of a big Gucci-size financial payoff. And chain retailers regularly ask their bean counters what sold last season in order to figure out what to buy for the coming one. The past constantly informs the fashion industry's present -- and often not for the good.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/18/AR2009091800119.html

 Shock tactics (safely wrapped up in irony and marketed as "fun") run riot, already it's death's turn again.  

Last fall, zombie chic emerged as a big trend on the men's runways, with models made up to look pale and ghostly, or as though they'd been dead for five days. Fall 2010 includes similarly grim themes so far. Alexander McQueen put Sting on the invitation for his men's show, labeling him "The Bone Collector." The Times notes, "a fascination with skeletal remains haunted the collection." In related news, the models in the show were really, really thin! HAH.

Moving on: DSquared2 made their models look like they had been splattered with blood, which is actually kind of gross, but hey! Also different! And we admit this is kind of a stretch, but Gianfranco Ferré sent one model down the runway in a leather crop-top sort of thing that reminds us of the top half of a butcher's apron, which McQueen showed for fall 2009, which a brutal killer might wear to, well, you know. In any case, that Ferré model kind of looks like he could be on his way to kill somebody.

http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2010/01/death-themes_still_evident_in.html

I find that more than a little sick - don't we have enough people already being sent on their way to, well, you know, actually kill somebody ?

Recently France24 TV in English gave Gaultier's latest bit of "fun" its seal of approval. To make things a bit more exciting than death, which is a bit of a downer, if dramatic, Gaultier offers us the battered boxer look, and below is the sort of inane drivel you get from New York fashion types; it's all a bit of "fun" with an "angry vivaciousness".

The other day we noted that the new fall 2010 men's collections contained a smattering of death themes. However, perhaps we were a little off, and the pervading theme that will bridge the Milan and Paris collections is actually a thing that may precede death and decay: violence. Dsquared2 sent bloodied models down their runway in Milan, and today in Paris, Jean Paul Gaultier sent dudes down the runway in boxing gloves and knee pads, their faces adorned with little nose casts and bloody scrapes. Gaultier himself strutted the runway made up to look battered and sweaty himself. Somehow the jolliness about everything violent or disturbing he puts on the runway makes it more fun than creepy, as does the fact that he didn't put greenish-white zombie makeup on his models' faces, allowing their angry vivaciousness to shine through.

http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2010/01/jean_paul_gaultier_sends_blood.html

Of course there's always sex in fashion - why not such other front page themes as violence and death ? After all, these are the price paid for ensuring that consumers live in a culture where they have a bit of surplus cash, or access to credit, to buy this stuff - to junk it next season as they dream up new variations on these visceral themes.

" ... the most vulgar aspects of perceived obsolescence can be seen in the fashion industry, particularly for women where experts deliberately set out to use psychology and emotional manipulation, as the Chairman of Allied Stores Corporation explains: 'Basic utility cannot be the foundation of a prosperous apparel industry...We must accelerate obsolescence... It is our job to make women unhappy with what they have.' "

http://www.e-ir.info/?p=485

If battered boxers are a bit too jolly for you, how about grey as the new black, with some funereal music:

"Gareth Pugh, the young British designer renowned for his extreme, all-black, cyber-gothic collections, made it a grey day at Paris Fashion Week.

Pugh, 26, a policeman's son from Sunderland, created a melancholic vision in every shade from smoke to pewter.
 
His male and female models were virtually indistinguishable - except when the sheer tulle tops rendered them practically topless - in grey hoods with escaping strands of lilac fake hair, their faces ashen.
They marched to the mournful sound of strings and drumbeats ...

Grey is the new black

How about a splash of red and reminders of bloody revolution and "neurotic aristocracy":

PARIS -- Monday (25.1.2010) marked the start of a French-Russian cultural exchange. And in one of those symbiotic relationships between fashion and the wider world, Russia -- its bloody revolution and its early modernist art -- were inspirations for the early couture collections.

For Josephus Thimister, an avant-garde designer who moved off the fashion radar a decade ago, the harshness of his subject was in the show's title: "1915: Bloodshed and Opulence."

Drawing from his grandmother's White Russian heritage and his own Belgian background, the designer took the same edgy stance as when his deconstructed clothes were inspired by the Baader-Meinhof gang back in 1999.

But these clothes, for both men and women, were no longer decayed and destroyed -- unless you count the painted blood splashes on khaki military coats or a cozy white knit. Instead, the look was noble and upscale, with fabrics, even fur-trimmed, to match.

There still was something raw and bleak about these clothes, even the defiant bright red cocktail dresses that Mr. Thimister defined as dress-up clothes for a "neurotic aristocracy" whose imperious behavior ended in blood and gore."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/fashion/26iht-rmab.html

What will it be next time - the "earthquake victim", or maybe the "suicide bomber" look with really "destroyed" clothes ?

But fashion, as I said, is part of the capitalist system in general, and its sick histrionics just a symptom of a broader malaise. So I wouldn't go as far as to blame the recession on fashion, as Deborah Orr did recently, and was rebuked for it:

Orr is trying to critique consumer culture by hanging responsibility for the recession on silly women who like handbags and the silly women's magazines they read, and while I'm as ready as the next girl to question the status/disposability combo fashion pushes, I feel obligated to point out that Orr's argument is actually false. And sloppy, all too convenient, and more than a touch classist and sexist. This recession is, as always, due to Wall St. greed, not Hermès and H&M and the women who dare admit to liking the feeling of wearing a new dress. And insofar as this recession has an archetypal villain, it's not the editor of Vogue and the prissy ladies who read her prissy lady magazine. It's the rich white men who run everything. I'm only half joking when I say I think it is important women remember our common enemy sometimes."

http://jezebel.com/5147043/a-radical-marxist-critique-of-vogues-culture-of-accretion

My thanks to Jerome for sponsoring the lunch on Sat., which I'm sure we all appreciated. Unfortunately afew lingered over details of slaughtering pigs till I was almost put off my chicken :-)  while JakeS tried to explain to me why, after studying a real subject like physics, he was going to start studying economics ! I still don't understand :-)

On the left: Helen, Linca, GK, LEP, nanne, Bernard, Geezer in Paris, (right-hand side from the back) Nomad, Melanchthon, Jerome, Millman, Bruno-Ken, Migeru, Fran

It took some time to get the whole group moving together:

Afew: "Now, where were we going?"
Linca: "I've forgotten too!" :-)

Linca's wife, Melechthon, afew, Linca, nanne, Millman, Bernard, GK, JakeS, dvx.

We walked by the Seine:

To the Eiffel Tower and Trocadero - on a beautiful afternoon:

Then back to the Cantalou for dinner:

Cheers !

More photos (including transport festival and photos of Seine, Eiffel Tower, etc;) with a larger-scale slideshow at:

http://eurotrib.ted-welch.com

Either view one by one using arrows, or click on the first image and then on the small rectangle in the upper right hand corner of the image for the slideshow.