by Alicia Graef

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/connecticut-may-let-students-opt-out-of-dissection.html#ixzz2TnRrczgC

America never permitted the bipolar rivalry to die down, and now given its taste for world domination it is wantonly creating new flashpoints for lethal confrontation. The upshot may be another arms race and a world that much closer to WW3.

Chris Fogle, CIA operative, up to now good, as usual. It’s ludicrous to deny that the CIA has long been an imperial tool for the global plutocracy.

CIA agents operate most everywhere. They don’t promote friendly relations. They’re up to no good. Some pose as diplomats.  Diplomacy provides cover for why they’re sent. Christopher Fogle was caught red-handed. He was assigned to Washington’s Moscow embassy political section. He was third secretary.

A web site name search found no match. It’s no surprise why. He was arrested, declared persona non grata, and expelled. He got off easy. He committed espionage. He should have been imprisoned.

On May 14, Voice of Russia (VOR) headlined “FSB catches CIA Agent Controller red handed,” saying:

According to the embassy’s political section, it “presents US foreign and security policy positions to the Government of the Russian Federation and interprets for Washington, Russia’s major foreign, defense and security policies.”

“Also, (it) analyzes and reports on significant events and trends in Russian domestic politics (elections, political parties, Kremlin-regional relations, media, human rights etc.) in so far as they affect Russia’s relationship with the US.”

“The section consists of three units: External Affairs, Political-Military Affairs, Internal Affairs.”

In other words, it spies. It does so under cover of diplomacy. It’s much like during Cold War days. Washington spends unknown sums doing it. Black budgets aren’t revealed.

VOR said:

“While the CIA may place an agent or officer under official cover in any position, even ambassador, it is important to note that the section this particular agent was working in would have been responsible for whatever operations the US has connected to the recent Russian opposition and meddling in the elections processes in Russia.”

When Fogle was arrested, FSB said he had technical devices, a disguise, a large stack of 500-euro notes (about $650 each), and Russian instructions for an intelligence agent he tried to recruit.

A photo showed him lying face down. His arms were pinned behind his back. Instructions apparently were in letter form. It was addressed to a “Dear friend,” saying:

“YOUR COOPERATION VALUED”

“This is an advance from someone who has been highly impressed by your professionalism, and who would highly value your cooperation in the future.”

“We are willing to offer you $100,000 and discuss your experience, expertise and cooperation, and payment could be significantly larger, if you are willing to answer concrete questions.”

It added that $1 million annually would be paid for longterm cooperation. Bonuses were promised for special information.

Instructions explained an anonymous Internet cafe gmail account -unbacggdA@gmail.com. Write to the address was said, wait seven days, and check for an answer.

The closing comment was: “Thank you for reading this. We are very anxious for the opportunity to be working with you in the near future. Your friends.”

VOR said embassy undercover work is “old school….(W)hat’s interesting is the apparent desperation the CIA is operating under in attempting to obtain intelligence about Russia.”

Using an anonymous gmail address is another twist. Russia’s FSB said:

“Recently, the US intelligence community has repeatedly attempted to recruit employees of Russian law enforcement agencies and special departments.”

These attempts were “recorded and passed to FSB Counter-Intelligence.” It prevents widespread internal US meddling. It does so effectively.

Various schemes were discovered. Doing so foiled US schemes. VOR said Washington’s color revolution plot failed. USAID was expelled.

On Wednesday, Russia’s Channel 1 television aired comments from a man called an FSB officer. His identify was concealed. He said:

“Over the past two years we have been observing persistent attempts by the CIA to recruit employees of Russian law enforcement and security agencies.”

“We asked our American colleagues to discontinue such disturbing practices with regard to Russian citizens. However, our requests were ignored.”

He added that Russian counterintelligence knew Fogle was a career CIA agent the moment he arrived. He was closely monitored.

His foiled espionage mission wasn’t his first. His amateurish disguise wasn’t the first time he used one.

Other CIA operatives infest Russia. Its counterintelligence perhaps is on to their schemes. It’s had decades learning how. Its Cold War adversary hasn’t changed.

Golos is a so-called independent NGO election monitor. America’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funds it.  In last year’s Russian elections, it alleged over 2,000 irregularities, including 900 in Moscow. Executive director Grigory Melkonyants claimed “massive serious violations.” He was well paid to say it.

NED, its National Democratic Institute (NDI) arm, the International Republican Institute (IRI), USAID, and similar organizations function as destabilizing US foreign policy tools. Russia’s a prime target. The Cold War never ended. It’s reinvented in new form.

Taking NED or other foreign money violates Russian law. Making baseless accusations compounds malfeasance. Golos is considered a foreign agent.  It’s been fined two or more times. Charges involved violating Russian electoral law. It still operates. Strict new reporting measures are enforced. All NGOs must comply. Washington’s subversion and destabilization schemes are harder to implement successfully. Fewer opportunities are afforded.

Moscow prefers cooperative relations with America. Good faith offers are made. Washington’s confrontational policies prevent them.  America’s covert war persists. It’s much like the bad old days. Names, faces, strategies and technology alone changed.

Russian effectiveness in preventing CIA subversion exposes a “very large gap in US intelligence,” said VOR.  Michael McFaul is US ambassador. On May 15, he was summoned to Russia’s Foreign Minister to explain. The previous day, he refused to answer journalists’ questions. He faced tougher official ones.

At the same time, Moscow’s Center for Political Information general director Alexei Mukhin believes Russian-US relations won’t change much. “Despite being a very unpleasant incident,” he said, “it is still more or an embarrassment.”

He’s likely right. Both countries know the other spies. Most nations do it. Key is not getting caught. Other issues take precedence. They affect normalized relations.

Last December, America’s Magnitsky Act became law. Putin called it “purely political (and) unfriendly.”

Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian attorney. In 2009, he died in police custody. His death drew international media attention. He specialized in civil law. He did anti-corruption work. He uncovered evidence of tax fraud. He implicated police, judiciary figures, tax officials, bankers, and Russia’s mafia.

He accused them of stealing around $230 million dollars in 2007 through fraudulent tax refunds. Initially his death was blamed on medical neglect. Later claims suggested murder. Official investigations began. In July 2011, death by medical neglect was ruled.

Enacting Magnitsky normalized US/Russian trade relations. Doing so came with strings. Moscow raised legitimate objections. The legislation imposes visa bans, asset freezes, and other sanctions on Russian nationals accused of committing human rights abuses. Other disturbing provisions were included.

Russia responded. The Dima Yakovlev bill was enacted. It imposes visa bans and asset freezes on US officials accused of violating the rights of Russian citizens abroad.  It prohibits US-sponsored NGOs from operating in Russia disruptively. It also targets US citizens associated with them. Another provision bans US citizens from adopting Russian orphans.

At issue is neglect causing harm or death. Dima Yakovlev was a Russian boy. His adoptive father’s reprehensible negligence and abuse caused his death. He was acquitted on manslaughter charges. Lax US adoption laws and follow-through procedures prevent knowing how other Russian orphans are treated.

US-Russia 2009 reset policies promised a “fresh start.” Rhetoric was more promise than fulfillment. Washington’s intentions prevent normalized relations. Obama is more belligerent than Bush. Conflict is prioritized over diplomacy.

Encircling Russia with US bases is major thorn affecting normalized relations. Militarizing North Africa, the Middle East and part of Eurasia breached GHW Bush’s pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev not to do so.

Washington’s promises aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. Russia understands well. At a time no nation threatens America, the Pentagon maintain a growing network of well over 1,000 global bases. Unknown secret ones exist.

Many are positioned near Russia’s borders. Doing so is provocative and belligerent. So called missile defense systems and advanced tracking radar are for offense, not defense. Friendly countries don’t treat others this way. Doing so is fraught with risks. Russia knows it’s targeted. US policy destroys trust.

Fogel’s arrest appears strategically timed. On June 17 and 18, Putin and Obama will attend the G8 summit. It’s scheduled for Northern Ireland. They’ll likely talk privately.  In September, they’ll meet again. The G20 summit is scheduled for St. Petersburg. Egg on Obama’s face affords Putin more leverage. How things will play out remains to be seen.

Major bilateral and geopolitical issues must be addressed. On May 15, Russia Today (RT) headlined “Presidential post: Putin’s response to Obama letter to be ‘mailed’ soon.”  Obama’s letter discussed missile defense, nuclear disarmament and transparent interaction. Putin’s response is expected shortly. It’s “exact content” isn’t known.

Russia’s Kommersant daily learned the main topics. RT said Obama proposed a legally binding agreement. He wants to assure neither country plans aggressive moves against the other.  It bears repeating, American promises aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. The 2010 New Start treaty was deeply flawed. It reflected old wine in new bottles.

Nuclear disarmament isn’t planned. Rhetoric changed, not policy. Washington plans new, upgraded weapons. They’ll replace outdated ones.  Dangerous testing continues. First-strike capability is prioritized. Plans include doing so from space. Putin understands the threat.  Mutual distrust won’t change. Putin has just cause for concern.

On May 15, he chaired a council of Russia’s top military officials. Discussion focused on developing defensive missile systems. At issue is countering America’s threat. It’s a menace too great to ignore.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached atlendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.  His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.” 

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html // Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

Kissinger: The face of banal evil in its twilight. Expect media hoopla when this slimy bastard dies.

Presidential Medals of Freedom are awarded annually. They mock what they claim to represent. Many go to deplorable recipients.  Previous dishonorees include GHW Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates, Henry Kissinger, Tony Blair, Shimon Peres, Margaret Thatcher, Alvaro Uribe, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, and Alan Greenspan among others.

Nobel Peace Prize recipients include notorious war criminals. In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt was honored. He once said “I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one.”

In 1919, Woodrow Wilson won. He broke his pledge to keep “us out of war.” In 1953, George Marshall was honored. He helped create NATO. It’s a killing machine. He was involved in aggressive war on North Korea.

Other dishonorees included Kofi Annan, Al Gore, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Henry Kissinger, Barack Obama, and the EU. Peacemakers aren’t considered.

Intrepid Freedom Awards are made annually. They’re “presented to a national or international leader who has distinguished himself in promoting and defending the values of freedom and democracy, the core beliefs of our nation.”

Dishonorees include a virtual rogue’s gallery of recipients.

They include GW and GHW Bush, Dick Cheney, Leon Panetta, Colin Powell, David Petraeus, Margaret Thatcher, Boris Yeltsin, Newt Gingrich, Bill and Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Silvio Berlusconi, Michael Bloomberg, and Yitzhak Rabin among others.

On May 23, Henry Kissinger will be the latest recipient. More on him below. Ceremonies will take place at New York’s Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. It calls itself “one of America’s leading historic, cultural and educational institutions.”

It’s centered on the Intrepid aircraft carrier (CVS-11). During WW II, it began operating. Today it’s an “educational center and a monument to all who have served our nation in uniform.”

Few understood their involvement in imperial wars. Annual Intrepid Freedom Award recipients bear much responsibility. Honoring them shames America. Rule of law principles and other democratic values are dishonored.

Kissinger’s one of America’s worst. On May 27, he’ll be 90 years old. He was an early architect of new world order harshness.  He’s a notorious war criminal. His legacy includes three to four million Southeast Asian war deaths. He was instrumental in overthrowing Chile’s democratic government. Augusto Pinochet replaced Salvador Allende. A reign of terror followed. It included arrests, killings and torture.

So did privatization of state enterprises, mass layoffs, sweeping deregulation, deep social spending cuts, wage freezes or cuts, unrestricted free market access for western corporations, corporate-friendly tax cuts, trade unionist crackdowns, and harsh repression against opposing a system incompatible with social democracy, civil and human rights.  Kissinger backed Suharto’s brutal dictatorship. His Kopassus special forces terrorized Indonesians. Their record includes kidnappings, rape, torture, targeted killings, sweeping violence, mass murder, and other atrocities against anyone challenging his authority.

He supported his West Papua takeover. He OK’d his East Timor invasion. Over two hundred thousand East Timorese died. Around half a million more were displaced. In his memoirs, former American UN ambassador Daniel Partick Moynihan wrote:

“The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about.”

“The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook.”

“This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.”

In two months, 10% of the population was annihilated. It was prelude for what followed.  Kissinger supported the Khmer Rouge’s rise to power and reign of terror. He encouraged a Kurdish revolt against Saddam Hussein. He then abandoned them. He advised Bush and Cheney on Iraq policy.

He backed a 1974 Cypriot fascist coup. He defended Turkey’s brutal invasion. He wanted a Washington, DC-based journalist kidnapped and killed.  He was complicit in Operation Condor. Pinochet and other Latin American despots reigned terror against alleged communists and political opponents. Tens of thousands perished.

He backed Pakistan’s “delicacy and tact” in overthrowing Bangladesh’s democratically elected government. Half a million deaths followed.  In 1974, his secret National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200) called for drastic global depopulation. Developing nations are resource rich, he said. They’re vital to US growth.

He wanted useless eaters eliminated. He said “Depopulation should be the highest priority of US foreign policy towards the Third World.”

He supported involuntary mass sterilizations. He wanted birth control made a prerequisite for US aid. He wanted hundreds of millions eliminated by 2000.  He supported the worst of Israeli crimes. Earlier, American Jewish Committee executive director David Harris said:

“Perhaps Kissinger felt that, as a Jew, he had to go the extra mile to prove to the president that there was no question where his loyalty lay.”

Mortimor Zukerman, Kenneth Bialkin and James Tisch once wrote:

“Mr. Kissinger consistently played a constructive role vis-a-vis Israel both as national security adviser and secretary of state, especially when the United States extended dramatic assistance to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.”

During the first Intifada, he advised Israel to challenge it harshly. He recommended banishing the media and suppressing what went on. He backed other deplorable schemes. He was mindless of the human toll. He wanted America benefitted at any cost. He waged war on humanity. He still advises on ways to do it.

He deplores peace. He supports war and state terror. “Afghanistan wasn’t enough,” he said. He endorsed waging war on Islam.  His legacy includes involvement in decades of crimes of war, against humanity and genocide. As National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, he served Nixon and Ford from January 1969 – January 1977.

He advised administrations that followed. In 1982, he founded Kissinger Associates, Inc. He heads it. It’s a New York-based international consulting firm.  Former CIA deputy director for intelligence Judith (Jami) Miscik is president. Other noted former US government officials served earlier. They did so in managerial capacities. At least most were complicit in war crimes.

Kissinger’s worst of all. He symbolizes imperial lawlessness. He waged war on humanity in and out of government. He’s still doing it. On May 27, he’ll again be honored. He deserves prison instead.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.  His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”  http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.  It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

http://www.dailycensored.com/america-honors-its-worst/

German DAX stock exchange board. The stuff that dreams are made of.

Forget everything you learned about markets, economics and finance. Perhaps Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and other noted figures were wrong.  Central banks run today’s world. Major ones matter most. Money printing madness controls everything. Love doesn’t make the world go round. Liquidity-driven markets reflect the power of bankers to do it. 

They’re more powerful than standing armies. They can levitate markets. They can enrich themselves at the same time.  They can do it while economies crater. The power of massive liquidity infusions combined with market manipulation generates huge profits.

What can’t go on forever, won’t. What’s going on now defies reason. Disconnect barely explains it. US equity markets hit record highs. So did Germany’s DAX. Japan’s Nikkei reached a five and a half year high. One recent headline read “Central banks pop champagne corks as stock markets soar.” Another said “Which European Market Will Hit a Record High Next?”

Turkey’s BIST-100 topped 91,000 for the first time. Switzerland’s SMI has a ways to go. It’s headed in the right direction. Sweden’s OMX Stockholm 30 and the OMX Nordic are closer.  London’s FTSE 100 looks poised for a record high. It could do so in weeks. Who said defying gravity’s impossible? Markets are doing it with ease.  Record valuations bear no relation to economic reality. Today’s disconnect is unprecedented. Paul Craig Roberts expects an eventual triple bubble explosion. On the one hand, he says “rich elites are stealing everything for themselves.” At the same time, he cites “three of the biggest bubbles in history.”

“The bond market, stock market and the US dollar” are levitating. (S)omething is going to go. This is possibly one of the riskiest years in Western civilization.”

Combined with police state enforcement and imperial wars, it’s menacing.  Australian economist Steve Keen‘s Debtwatch web site “analyses the collapse of the global debt bubble.” He calls America’s stock market a giant one. It’s debt-fueled. Margin debt levels match 2000 and late 2007 highs, he says.

“Nothing can accelerate forever. At some point the acceleration stops, and when it does the market breaks.”   He believes trouble’s coming in one or two years. He thinks America’s stock market will burst the way Japan’s did in the early 1990s.

The key Nikkei Index peaked near 39,000. It did so on 1989′s last trading day. It fell 63% in less than three years. Rolling recessions and recoveries followed. It didn’t bottom until February 2009. It closed at 7,163. On May 17, it closed at 15,138.

According to Keen:

“I think we’re (heading for) a long slow bleed, much longer and slower than the Japanese stock market crash. The dynamics are similar.”

“In 500 years time,” he added, “people will look back and see this as the biggest debt-financed bubble in human history and ask, ‘why didn’t we realize it?’ ”  Bruce Kasting worked on Wall Street for 25 years. He’s no longer there. His blog site discusses financial issues. He calls Bernanke’s policy “reckless endangerment.”  He claims he can cease QE with no ill consequences. “It’s never been done before. Not by the Fed. Not by any Central Bank.”

“To think that such a daunting task can be accomplished without negative consequences is foolish,” said Kasting.

PIMCO’s Bill Gross sees bubbles everywhere. It doesn’t mean they’ll pop immediately.  Speculators assume Fed policy will remain accommodative “over the long-term and under the assumption that the US economy is doing better than most economies.”  Lots of money is chasing lots of risk, says Gross. Central banks are “blowing bubbles. When that stops, there will be repercussions. Not just in the bond market but in the stock market as well and a developing one in the hous(ing) market.”

Gross warned that the multi-decade US bond bull market ended. Higher interest rates will eventually follow. A 1% rise means over $100 billion in more interest. It’s negative for economic growth. Most developed countries have debt to GDP ratios above 100%.   They’re manageable with record low interest rates. Higher ones risk default in troubled economies. European PIIGS countries are most vulnerable (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain).

Marc Faber warns that “something will break very badly.”

“In the 40 years I’ve been working as an economist and investor, I have never seen such a disconnect between the asset market and the economic reality.”

“Asset markets are in the sky and the economy of the ordinary people is in the dumps, where their real incomes adjusted for inflation are going down and asset markets are going up.”

Graham Summers warns “It’s official: Stocks are in a bubble.” It’s worse than anything he’s seen in his career.  Stocks rallied every Tuesday for 17 straight weeks. Traders “are now conditioned to play for this move.”

It’s “POMO day.” The Fed pumps markets with liquidity. Doing so drives stocks higher.

“The market is beyond overstretched. We have not had a 5% correction in six months. Stocks have gone almost straight up for 89 days (we haven’t had a 3+day correction in that long).”

“This is an all time record. The last time stocks rallied without a 3+ day correction was in the buildup to the Crash of 1987.”

“Copper is great at predicting economic growth.” It’s trending lower. Stocks are poor predictors. Major divergences between them will be resolved sharply.

Rampant insider selling continues. Stocks are disconnected from reality. They’re “totally out of control.” Most days hit record highs. It’s unprecedented.

“At this point, no long term investor in their right mind should be buying. This is especially true given that the S&P 500 is now not only totally disconnected from economic reality, but is disconnected from every other asset class.”

Stocks diverged from bonds, gold, copper and oil. They’re last to react. “This bubble will end as all bubbles do: in disaster.”

Main street conditions are worse than during the Great Depression. Europe’s as disconnected as America. More on that below.

Paul Craig Roberts calls offshoring US jobs a greater threat than terrorism. It’s been ongoing for years. It’s most felt when jobs are scarce. Good ones are fast disappearing.  Politicians remain in denial. Millions more jobs remain vulnerable. Displaced employees “left unemployed or in lower paid work have a reduced presence in the consumer market.”

Outsourcing jobs erodes US economic strength. China, India, Brazil and other developing countries gain at America’s expense.  Instead of using the nation’s resources for economic growth, Washington prioritizes militarism, permanent wars, and corporate giants’ interests at the expense of ordinary people.

It’s madness. It’s self-destructive. It sacrifices longterm economic health for short and intermediate term gains. WW III already started. So far, it’s unlike WW I and II. It’s international, unconventional, asymmetric, disruptive, anti-democratic, lawless, low to higher intensity, political, psychological and financial.

Financial schemes involve:

• massive wealth transfers from ordinary people to corporate giants and super-rich elites;

• bail in confiscation of assets;

• lawless sanctions, embargoes and blockades;

• schemes to control natural resources, trade and money;

• entrapping nations in unrepayable debt;

• manufacturing financial crises, and more.

On May 16, the Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin (GEAB) headlined “Systemic crisis 2013: with record exchange highs, the planet’s imminent plunge into recession.”   Prevailing calm is deceptive. It often precedes the storm. “(S)everal signals show that a reversal in the economic situation is imminent.”

Economies never recovered from 2008. Conditions continue to deteriorate. Europe’s in recession. More on that below. China’s growth is slowing. It exports are declining.  Australia’s export dependent economy makes it a good indicator. It’s “struggling. Consumers are also marking time. US wholesale and retail sales are on the decline.”

Most “US benchmark indices are swinging into the red.” Major banks know a storm looms. They’re using “all the means at their disposal (legal and illegal) to shelter themselves.”

BRICS countries are some of the world’s fastest growing. They have their own strategy. They’re gradually moving away from the dollar.

They’re “building a (multipolar) world system where they would have greater representation.” They’re doing so at the expense of America and other Western countries.  America’s economy is troubled. Four years of QE haven’t worked. Pushing on a string defines Fed policy. Money sits on bank balance sheets as excess reserves. Credit expansion’s anemic. Manufacturing’s contracting. Fiscal tightening exacerbates things.

Europe’s in recession. Southern Europe’s in Depression. Eurozone economic data are negative. In Q I, Italy contracted 0.5% from the previous quarter.  Seven straight quarterly declines reflect its troubled economy. It’s been so longterm. From 2000 – 2010, it expanded an anemic 2.5%. The current trend is negative. Protracted decline appears likely.

It’s not alone. ECB policy hasn’t worked. Mario Monti’s no more effective than Bernanke. Markets are disconnected from economic reality.  The Eurozone’s in recession. Nine of its 17 countries have negative growth. They include Italy, France, Greece, Spain, Cyprus, Portugal, Belgium, Finland and the Netherlands.

So do EU members Hungary and the Czech Republic. Expect more to follow.  Slovenia’s deeply troubled. It looks like the next Cyprus. Britain teeters on recession. So does Germany. Monetary madness achieved little. Force-fed austerity is self-defeating.

Confiscating bank deposits is the new normal. It’s a diabolical plot. It’s consolidating financial power. It’s price is economic decline. Equities are the last asset class to react. When it does, watch out.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.  His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

Directed by Baz Luhrmann, co-written by Luhrmann and Craig Pearce, based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald

F.S. Fitzgerald

“It’s not all rubbish,” cried Amory passionately. “This is the first time in my life I’ve argued Socialism. It’s the only panacea I know. I’m restless. My whole generation is restless. I’m sick of a system where the richest man gets the most beautiful girl if he wants her, where the artist without an income has to sell his talents to a button manufacturer. Even if I had no talents I’d not be content to work ten years, condemned either to celibacy or a furtive indulgence, to give some man’s son an automobile.” Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (1920)

It is unfortunate that during the filmmaking process no one ever turned to director Baz Luhrmann and suggested that his interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) was wrongheaded and likely to result in an artistic travesty.

Now we are burdened with the result, and there’s not much that can be done about that.

The Great Gatsby

Luhrmann’s version of Gatsby opened in the US last Friday, and it may well reach a wide audience. There is an interest in the material and enough left (enticing fragments) of the original, in these times when intriguing dramas are few and far between, to encourage audiences hungry for something out of the ordinary.

As well, certain prominent newspaper critics, who should know better, are irresponsibly recommending the new Gatsby, as though it were a substantial treatment and showed anything more than a passing familiarity with the book’s major concerns.

Fitzgerald’s novel, set in the summer of 1922, concerns a young man from the Midwest, Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire in the new film), who sells bonds on Wall Street and lives on suburban Long Island (in a small house) next to the mansion owned by the enigmatic, youthful millionaire Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio). Nick’s appealing cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan) and her brutish, philandering husband Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) live directly across the bay where older money holds sway.

Gatsby regularly hosts elaborate, lavish parties, attended by New York celebrities and hangers-on, most of whom have not been invited. Rumors circulate as to the source of his vast wealth. Nick makes Gatsby’s acquaintance at one of these gatherings. He eventually learns of the other man’s deep, abiding feelings for Daisy, whom Gatsby met while still a poor young man, a soldier in World War I, five years earlier in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.

Gatsby’s all-dominant desire is not simply that Daisy will leave Tom, but that she will publicly declare she never loved him and essentially efface the intervening years. Gatsby has made his millions (through bootlegging and stock fraud in partnership with gangster Meyer Wolfsheim [Amitabh Bachchan]), bought the Long Island mansion and organized his personal life to a large extent around the goal of getting close to Daisy again. Introduced by Nick, the pair ultimately commence an affair.

Meanwhile Buchanan has set up his mistress, Myrtle Wilson (Isla Fisher), with an apartment in New York, where he visits her—on one occasion in Nick’s reluctant company. Myrtle’s weak and vulnerable husband George (Jason Clarke) owns a garage in the wretched stretch between affluent Long Island and Queens known as the Valley of Ashes.

The various desperate and delusional relationships set off a tragic series of events, which result in death and misery for the upstarts and have-nots, while the Buchanans, largely untroubled and uncaring, escape unscathed.

Fitzgerald’s work is a brilliant effort, easy to underestimate in its brevity, delicacy and the simplicity of the drama. The novel has something of the diaphanous sensibility of Keats, the author’s favorite poet. At the same time, it is an angry, scathing work, as thoroughgoing a debunking of the “American dream” as there ever has been…

Unfortunately, Luhrmann is simply not up to the intellectual and social questions involved. He is not even close. Not to mince words, the film is something of a disaster.

The Australian director brings to the material a largely crude and cartoonish approach. He appears to suffer from an almost fatal literal-mindedness. Every hint, allusion or metaphor in the novel he chooses to dramatize is spelled out in large, capital letters.

Taking off from comments by the narrator such as this one a third of the way through, “Reading over what I have written so far …,” the filmmakers have created a framing device in which Carraway is recovering from alcoholism (à la Fitzgerald himself) and a general emotional breakdown in an absurdly snow-bound Midwestern sanitarium under the care of a psychologist of some sort. Nick sets to work on an account of the events as part of his therapy.

How does this add anything? It merely provides an opportunity for Luhrmann and co-scenarist Craig Pearce to insert more of their own simplistic dialogue.

As part of his general literal-mindedness, Luhrmann apparently believes the way to present the restlessness of the Jazz Age is by a camera that rarely rests on its human or other subjects. We are swooped across the bay in Long Island, from the tops of skyscrapers to New York’s streets, through the hideous Valley of Ashes, all in overdone, rapid-fire fashion. The various excesses cancel each other out, leaving almost nothing behind.

When Nick explains, as preparations are made at his house for the first encounter between Daisy and Gatsby, “The flowers were unnecessary, for at two o’clock a greenhouse arrived from Gatsby’s, with innumerable receptacles to contain it,” Luhrmann generates a virtual greenhouse on screen. It is excessive, unconvincing and distracting. This sort of thing occurs a dozen times or more. The story and themes simply get lost.

The secondary figures, Gatsby’s party-goers, Myrtle’s guests in New York and others, are a collection of grotesques. The Long Island party scenes themselves, set to contemporary popular music, are entertaining enough as a collective tour de force, but have next to nothing to do with Fitzgerald or 1920s America. The sets, presumably on purpose, look unreal, something out of a Disney film.

On those few, fleeting occasions when the goings-on slow down and recognizably human moments occur, one feels the extraordinary truth of the book and its dialogue. Oddly enough, set against the general silliness, the lines then do stand out. DiCaprio is probably a good choice for Gatsby, although Luhrmann makes this difficult to determine.

In one of the few decently paced scenes, Carraway asks Gatsby whether Wolfsheim, to whom he has just been introduced by Gatsby, is an actor or a dentist. “He’s a gambler,” the latter explains, and the man who fixed the 1919 World Series. (Wolfsheim is based on the famed gangster Arnold Rothstein, whom Fitzgerald once met.) Carraway is staggered. “‘How did he happen to do that?’ I asked after a minute. ‘He just saw the opportunity.’” In the film, the last line is delivered perfectly by DiCaprio.

The scene in which the marital drama reaches its peak, in the Plaza Hotel on a horrible, hot day, is presented more or less straightforwardly by Luhrmann. Such moments are terribly rare, however.

It may be that Luhrmann, Pearce and their collaborators genuinely admire the novel and only mean to make it accessible to a youthful, contemporary audience. If so, in my view, they have badly misstepped. Their pandering to what they conceive to be the current level of understanding and culture would be enough of a mistake, but, worse than that, in the confused, pointless process the filmmakers have cut out the film’s core.

Luhrmann and Pearce have chosen to reduce the drama in The Great Gatsby largely to its element of a romance. They take to heart the great love between Gatsby and Daisy, and paint it in sentimental, conventional colors. This extends to making the young woman a far more sympathetic character than she ought to be, adding details that are not in—and, in fact, contradict the spirit of—the novel (for instance, her contemplation of a last-minute phone call to Gatsby).

Fitzgerald has something else in mind. Like his fictional contemporary Clyde Griffiths (in Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, also published in 1925, although coming from a different generation and artistic tradition), Gatsby is in love less with an actual woman (whom he hardly knows, after all) than with a way of life—identified with luxury, elegance, ease, good taste, refinement—that finds individual human expression in Daisy.

Toward the end of the book, as Gatsby and Nick are struggling to define Daisy’s magical appeal, Fitzgerald has this wonderful passage:

“‘Her voice is full of money,’ he [Gatsby] said suddenly. That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it. … high in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl. …”

The 1974 film version, with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, which never fully comes to life under the direction of Jack Clayton, at least placed this social element at the center of things. (The 1949 rendition, with Alan Ladd as Gatsby, Betty Field as Daisy and Shelley Winters as Myrtle, directed by Elliott Nugent, is not readily available. Blacklist victim Howard Da Silva was in both the 1949 and 1974 adaptations.)

The lethal denouement in Luhrmann’s film is put down almost exclusively to Tom Buchanan’s malevolence. Of course, Tom is responsible for a good deal, but Daisy is fully complicit and, in fact, the perpetrator of one of the central crimes (a fact this version tends to downplay). Not for nothing does Fitzgerald write, after the defining catastrophe has taken place, “They [Tom and Daisy] weren’t happy …—and yet they weren’t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together.”

A novel is not a history book, or a political manifesto. The important artist accumulates thoughts, feelings, moods and themes over the course of years and works them into concrete and coherent imagery charged with meaning. Any serious work also includes ambiguities, complexities, “asymmetrical” elements that are not easily reducible to immediate social analysis.

However, the individual artist does not draw his or her conceptions and emotions from empty space, nor are they simply the expression of eternal psycho-biological urges. Significant artistic ideas and representations are always shaped by collective human experience, by historical and social development.

Fitzgerald thought a good deal about political events and social life. His books and letters only have to be read carefully for that to become apparent. Born in 1896, the novelist belonged to a generation deeply affected by the First World War, the Russian Revolution and subsequent developments.

One example. In The Great Gatsby’s first bit of important dialogue, Tom Buchanan goes off about a book he has read, The Rise of the Colored Empires, “by this man Goddard.” He goes on: “The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”

The thinly fictionalized reference is to Lathrop Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920), a reactionary diatribe about the dangers expressed in the title. But Stoddard was not only a racist (and later for a time a sympathizer of the Nazis), he was a ferocious anti-communist, who penned such gems as “Bolshevism: The Heresy of the Underman,” and “Social Unrest and Bolshevism in the Islamic World.”

In the book’s dramatically climactic scene, Buchanan returns to the issue: “Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.”

One need not overestimate the references in Fitzgerald’s letters to “We Marxians…,” “I’m still a socialist …,” “I’m a Communist enough …”, to grasp the degree to which he knew his way around these issues. In the portion of This Side of Paradise cited at the top of this article, this piece of dialogue goes on, involving the central figure, Amory:

“Russia is your example of a beneficent violence, I suppose?”

“Quite possibly,” admitted Amory. “Of course, it’s overflowing just as the French Revolution did, but I’ve no doubt that it’s really a great experiment and well worth while.”

“Don’t you believe in moderation?”

“You won’t listen to the moderates, and it’s almost too late. The truth is that the public has done one of those startling and amazing things that they do about once in a hundred years. They’ve seized an idea.”

One of the most moving expressions of Fitzgerald’s feelings about society comes through in a comment he made to his daughter in a letter only days before his death in December 1940: “Sometime when you feel very brave and defiant and haven’t been invited to one particular college function, read the terrible chapter in [Marx’s] Das Kapital on ‘The Working Day,’ and see if you are ever quite the same.”

Along with many other things, The Great Gatsby is a furious attack on the rich in America. No one has ever put on paper a more stinging and unforgettable indictment: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. …” (These words are essentially thrown away in Luhrmann’s film!)

The characters are rather monstrous in the novel, by and large. On receiving a copy of the book in April 1925, the critic Edmund Wilson wrote Fitzgerald and heaped praise on it. His only reservation was that “the characters are mostly so unpleasant in themselves that the story becomes rather a bitter dose before one has finished it. … I wish, in your next, you would handle a more sympathetic theme. (Not that I don’t admire Gatsby and see the point of the whole thing, but you will admit that it keeps us inside the hyena cage.)”

Fitzgerald, perhaps a little more diffusely, also has things he wants to say about the point that society in the US has reached by the 1920s (by which time of course it was the dominant world power). The final pages seem to suggest that not only Gatsby’s personal fantasy, but America’s progressive promise (“the last and greatest of all human dreams,”) as well, which once seemed so unlimited, are things of the past.

Fitzgerald writes of Gatsby, “He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.” Already behind America …

Luhrmann’s artistic failures and lapses have to be seen in context. Whatever may be in their heads, the unwillingness of the filmmakers to take on The Great Gatsby’s indictment of the parasites and criminals who were running America 90 years ago, and who have strengthened their stranglehold exponentially since then, has a certain objective significance.

The current crop of parasites and criminals in America, and their hangers-on, would not care to see their activities and lifestyles exposed to public view. That pressure works its way through confused, socially oblivious artists such as Luhrmann and Pearce.

Speaking for all those who would have attended Gatsby’s parties, and perhaps attend such events today, Kathryn Schulz of New York magazine (who has also written for the Nation, among other publications) explained earlier this month, “Why I Despise The Great Gatsby.” She noted that it was the only book she had read a number of times “despite failing … to derive almost any pleasure at all from the experience.”

One can only note that the book was not intended to provide pleasure for the self-satisfied upper middle class. It was directed against that social layer, and Schulz’s ongoing unhappiness with Fitzgerald (a “moralist,” and also, inevitably, someone with an “unthinking commitment to a gender order so archaic as to be Premodern”) is one of the highest recommendations for reading his novel.

Unhappily, Luhrmann’s film version is a failure by any objective standard.

David Walsh is wsws.org’s senior culture and film critic.