After US Hegemony - What Monsters?

- Reading time: 23 minutes

Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

- edited from Twitter 30 September 2024

America at home

We get so bogged down in the daily stream of atrocities committed by Israel that it's easy to lose sight of the big picture. The reason why Palestine and Lebanon matter so much, besides being an affront to our most basic humanity, is because whatever we collectively let happen - or not - will define the fundamental structure of the international order for decades to come.

What we're living through now is a transition between world orders. We're exiting US hegemony - it's over already - and entering an new order. Read more

When lies tell the truth ...

- Reading time: 260 minutes

The photo above is fake in the literal sense. But it contains a truth, brilliantly conceived by artist and Instagramer Brailliant - his work here. Albert and Marilyn probably never actually met, although her friend Shelly Winters relayed that Marilyn held him as a fantasy partner and there are various rumours and even jokes about a liasion.

Albert was a socialist at heart, a German Jew who fled the Nazis and spoke openly against injustice everywhere. He opposed Leninism and what he saw as the tyranny of the Bolsheviks. The passage below is excerpted from Why Socialism, published in the first issue of the socialist journal Monthly Review. Read more

barricade

- Reading time: 32 minutes

Fitzroy 1977

Not the 1871 Commune, not Paris 1968 or Belfast in 1969  ... but suburban Fitzroy in 1977

Barricade! the resident fight against the F19 freeway

    Anna hides in a shoebox somewhere, prancing in a photograph through flooded streets beneath a bright Chinese umbrella. I dig out all the albums and folders looking for the actual print, to no avail - but the real image is always in my mind. Never lost or missing, I still see her clearly even though half a century has slipped past.

    Alexandra Parade Fitzroy, late 70s, inner city Naarm. Melbourne they called it then. 

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    deepest noir

    - Reading time: 12 minutes

    film noir as political prophecy...

    Farewell My Lovely

    The HBO series True Detective fits the post-noir genre perfectly. Not visually so much - it's almost steam punk at times - but essentially, in it's essence, it meets most of Roger Ebert's criteria as listed later in this post. The characters are disfunctional and flawed, even when innocent in their hearts. There are no happy endings. Corruption, betrayal, disappointment and homage to the general theme of pulp fiction permeate the story lines.

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