E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

It will not surprise readers of this blog to learn that we are not major benefactors of Trump's campaign for re-election, or that we hardly favour his usual tactics or rhetoric. Even by his own standards, however, the threats of the past few hours have marked an escalation into territory more usually occupied by the Taliban, or other notable war criminals. The threat to destroy 'cultural' targets of value to the Iranian people and their civilisation, aside from anything else, is repulsive. Its barbarism is, frankly, against the grain of any optimistic hopes left to the human race in the few decades left to us. Should such destruction be visited upon museums, ancient or sacred places, monuments, or other national treasures, the whole world will be impoverished, both morally and culturally. Trump's behaviour of the past few days - beyond Nixonian - is beginning to confirm the worst fears many had upon his election - that if threatened he would stoop to Nero-level...

THIS MAN KNEW WHERE ALL THE BODIES WERE BURIED IN HOLLYWOOD.... I was sexually harassed by an actor when I was a young teenager, after going to an audition with him, so the recent revelations about the great and the good of Hollywoodland and its outlying tar pits were hardly going to leave me cold.  Like a lot of people online at the moment, each accusation against a star, producer or TV actor, ricochets all over the place. But none of the downfalls has hurt as much as Kevin Spacey's . I have taken flak online the past week for criticising the cynical, and to my mind, Orwellian, decision to reshoot film history and cut Spacey out of the new Ridley Scott Getty film. The Onion had a joke about the whole industry being repopulated with Christopher Plummer clones (some began to misbehave). Even to mention sadness at the news that Kevin Spacey's acting career is over was apparently tantamount to mourning the death of Satan. However, I have a long and complicated relation...

Ironically, "Make America Great Again" will mark the end of American Exceptionalism.   NED HARTLEY, AMERICAN WRITER AND MUSICIAN President Obama gave a press conference at the White House on Monday, November 14, before leaving for a series of state visits overseas. His intelligence and grasp of the minute details of governance only highlighted the fact that Donald Trump is going to look like a complete buffoon at his first news conference. Maybe he'll get impeached for mental incompetence.   Growing up in the years following World War II, one of the persistent questions that was always just below the surface was, "How could good people allow the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust to happen?" Well, now we know. There's not a lot you can do to stop it. Not everyone is enlightened, and sometimes the mob underbelly wins. I hate to sound defeatist, but all I can come up with is that Germany survived it. It took a generation or two, but Germany'...

THE STORM-TRUMPERS CHEER THEIR MONSTROUS WIN The old adage that history repeats, the second time as farce, almost rhymes with this nasty nightmarish moment, the election of President Trump by a whitelash landslide, except the American Caligula now in our midst - the most dangerous and dishonest person to be democratically elected to such a powerful leadership role since WW2 - is no farcical figure.   Comedians might wryly note that Donald J Trump is very presidential - he has the moral compass of Nixo n, the sexual ethics of Bill Clinton , the intelligence of George W Bush , the cultural sophistication of Reagan , the political experience of Eisenhower , and the family-decency of Kennedy - but this approach lacks depth or clarity.  There has actually never been a president like Trump before. There may never be a presidency, again, after him.   There are two ways to treat this most horrible of events - and one is with cautious optimism; however, s...

TRUMP IS PART OF A HISTORY OF WHITE MALE RAGE Like a crazed killer clown, whether we are thrilled, horrified, shocked, or angered (or all of these) by Donald Trump , we cannot claim to be rid of him just yet. He bestrides the world stage like a silverback gorilla (according to one British thug), or a bad analogy, but he is there, a figure, no longer of fun, but grave concern. There has long been a history of misogynistic behaviour in American gangster culture - one thinks of the grapefruit in the face in The Public Enemy , or Sinatra throwing a woman out of his hotel room and later commenting he didn't realise there was a pool below to break her fall, or the polluted womb in Pacino's Scarface ... and of course, some gangsta rap is also sexist.  American culture has a difficult way with handling the combined aspects of male power, and male privilege, that, especially in heteronormative capitalist enclaves, where money/pussy both become grabbable, reified objects and obj...

This blog has often over the past ten years grappled with issues of evil, and today reminds us that the human being is capable of atrocities that no animal could imagine. Indeed, Greene 's famous dictum that evil is a failure of the imagination is clever but sadly false - as is the idea that a lack of empathy is to blame - indeed, the deepest forms of evil require both imagination and empathy, in order to be executed with fully diabolical impact.  You cannot prudently hurt a creature you do not understand, except by accident. 70 years ago, the war against Japan ended. We have been reminded that during that war, among other barbarisms, Japanese medical doctors performed vivisection for medical students on Allied prisoners of war.  Human Vivisection is the worst crime imaginable - it is surgically altering a living sentient being for experimental purposes. I cannot describe these wretched and utterly degrading surgeries here properly, but medical students were forced to watc...