Pynchon: He Who Lives By the List, Dies by It

By Adam Kirsch at The NY Sun (15.11.2006). Reviews Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Penguin, 2006 :

After reading "Against the Day" (Penguin Press, 1,085 pages, $35), however, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Mr. Pynchon's difficulty is really just the costume worn by his simplicity. The complexity of his novels, and of this eagerly awaited sixth novel in particular, is really a matter of simple multiplicity: They are stuffed to bursting with oddities, so that the reader moves through them at the halting pace of a rubbernecker. In "Against the Day," which spans the quarter-century between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the end of World War I, Mr. Pynchon dispenses his oddities in double fistfuls. We get a hot-air balloon crewed by boy adventurers, a dynamite-toting anarchist, a mysterious fourth dimension, a crystal lens that splits time, a ship that can sail through sand, the legendary Tibetan kingdom of Shambhala — and that doesn't even begin to exhaust the list.

The Rise and Decline of the Neoconservatives

By Jim Lobe & Michael Flynn at Right Web (17.11.2006) :

Summary: Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, an influential, neoconservative-led pressure group called the Project for the New American Century issued a letter to the president calling for a dramatic reshaping of the Middle East as part of the war on terror. Although many of the items on the neoconservatives' agenda, including ousting Saddam Hussein, were eventually adopted by the George W. Bush administration, the group's remarkable string of successes has gradually given way to a steady decline, culminating most recently in the president's decision after the November midterm elections to replace Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, an important erstwhile ally of the neoconservatives, with Robert Gates. This essay examines the rise and decline of the neoconservatives and their post-Cold War agenda. We conclude that although the neoconservatives and their allied aggressive nationalists, such as Vice President Dick Cheney, retain sufficient weight to hamper efforts to push through major reversals in U.S. foreign policy, the increasing isolation of this political faction coupled with recent political events in the United States point to the potential emergence of a more cautious, realist-inspired agenda during the final two years of the Bush presidency.

Louise Brooks at 100

By John Davidson at PotMatters (16.11.2006). Introduces The Pandora's Box (DVD) and Peter Cowie's latest book, Louise Brooks: Lulu Forever (Rizzoli, November 2006), and interviews Mr. Cowie. The new year begins with Lulu.

All the father's men

By Sidney Blumenthal at The Salon (16.11.2006).

Bush family guardians James Baker and others are trying to rescue "Sonny" from his failed Middle East policies. Will he listen this time?

La vraie vie d'Antonin Artaud

Par Patrick Kéchichian au Monde (16.11.2006).

Continue reading "La vraie vie d'Antonin Artaud"

Terayama Shuji Experimental Image World

From UBU Web :

Poet, playright, theatre director, filmmaker, essayist, agitator and lover of all things anarchistic, chaotic, and truthful, TERAYAMA SHUJI (1936-1983) is one of Japan's most revered and respected artists. In the heady and extremist Japanese art scene of the late '70s, Terayama created a number of unforgettable and highly controversial films. EMPEROR TOMATO KETCHUP is his epic, sexually revolutionary and hallucinatory work from 1972 in which "magical women act as the initiatory, yet protectively maternal sexual partners to children. The children, in revolt, have condemned their parents to death for depriving them of self-expression and sexual freedom; they create a society in which fairies and sex education are equally important and literally combinable." -- Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art (AVI)

Probe of Non-News News Sought

By Joe Garofoli at The SF Chronicle/CommonDreams (15.11.2006) :

Frustrated by local TV news outlets that run "commercials disguised as news," an FCC commissioner wants to investigate stations that don't tell viewers they may be watching corporate propaganda instead of independently reported information.

KGO-TV, an ABC affiliate in San Francisco, was one of 46 stations in 22 states cited for improperly including video news releases, or VNRs, into news stories, according to a report released Tuesday by two watchdog groups Center for Media and Democracy and Free Press. Tuesday's report was a follow-up to an April study by the same organizations that found that 77 stations nationally -- including CBS 5-TV (KPIX) in San Francisco -- had improperly used VNRs. Representatives of both stations acknowledged erroneously using them and called them isolated incidents.

Most of us Japanese are forced to watch dramas "desguised as news" on TV everyday! Not only "corporate propaganda" but also govermental propaganda.

Paris, Samuel Beckett’s final stop

By Max Hidalgo at Cafe Babel (14.11.2006) :

One hundred years after his birth, Paris presents the complete œuvre of Samuel Beckett, one of the European writers who best expressed the malady of the 20th century (until June 2007)

Depleted Uranium, Another Gift from the Imperialists

By Pauline Paulinson at Counter Currents (16.11.2006).

Anorexie : décès d'un mannequin

Du Nouvel Observateur (16.11.2006). Brazillian fashion model, Anna Carolina Reston, 18 years old, died of anorexia on Tuesday. 1.74 m tall, she weighs only 40 kg. My daughters knew her well (though I didn't).

The Carlyle White House

By William Rivers Pitt at TruthOut (14.11.2006).

Makings of China's epic madame

By Seth Faison at The LA Times (10.11.2006). Reviews Laura Tyson Li, Madame Chiang Kai-shek China's Eternal First Lady, Atlantic Monthly Press, 558 pp., $30 :

MADAME Chiang Kai-Shek dazzled Americans, using her flawless English, delivered in a lilting Southern accent, political cunning and legendary drive to seduce supporters to her side of China's epic civil war during the middle part of the 20th century.

The Nationalist regime, headed by her husband, was hated by the Chinese people for its notorious brutality and corruption. But as portrayed by Madame Chiang, especially to American audiences, Chiang Kai-shek's government was a modern, educated bulwark of democracy and freedom for a country whose history had allowed little of either. Indeed, Madame Chiang personified the vaunted hopes, bitter disappointments and complex misunderstandings of the U.S.-China relationship, which vacillated wildly during her exceptional 105-year lifetime.

Amah Amah Koon Beiki

JibJab. Sing along, boys. It makes you feel good.

Relire le Quichotte

Par Florence Madelpuech à Fabula Acta (11.11.2006). Sur Releyendo el Quijote, cuatrocientos años después, dir. Augustin Redondo, Paris, Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2005, 212 p. :

En Espagne, il y a quatre cents ans, paraissait la première partie de Don Quichotte. Dix ans plus tard, Cervantès y ajoutait la seconde, offrant là l’œuvre magistrale et fondatrice que l’on connaît. C’est en forme de commémoration, célébrant cet anniversaire littéraire et également ses vingt-cinq ans d’existence, que le CRES (Centre de Recherche sur l’Espagne des xvi^e et xvii^e siècles, fondé par Augustin Redondo et dirigé par Pierre Civil) a réuni autour du Quichotte treize contributions, toutes en langue espagnole, qui se proposent de relire et d’analyser le roman cervantin à la lueur de nouvelles perspectives critiques. L’ouvrage, sous la direction d’Augustin Redondo, revisite ainsi quatre grands thèmes : le texte, entendu comme matière organisée en paratexte et épisodes (« El texto revisitado : epígrafes y episodios »), la structure, dessinée par des principes d’ordre rhétorique ou conceptuel (« Retórica y conceptos a nueva luz »), l’esprit cervantin ou les lettres comme art de l’invention (« Ingenio y creación cervantina : un replanteamiento ») et enfin, l’altérité (« Otra percepción de la alteridad »).

The Okinawan Election and Resistance to Japan's Military First Politics

By Gavan McCormack at Japan Focus (n.d., 15 or 16).

The National Politics of the Yasukuni Shrine

By Takahashi Tetsuya at Japan Focus (n.d.) | Download (PDF).

Japanese nukes: Voicing the unthinkable

By Hisane Masaki at Asia Times (16.11.2006).

Le roman noir, mythe du XXe siècle

Par Sébastien Lapaque (09.11.2006).

Le Polar américain, la modernité et le mal de Benoît Tadié - PUF, 233 p., 25 €.

Continue reading "Le roman noir, mythe du XXe siècle"

Amateur Videos Are Putting Official Abuse in New Light

By Mary Jordan at Washington Post (15.11.2006) :

"Do I really have to do this?" Hemy, who had never been arrested before, pleaded with the female officer standing in front of her in a tiny police station locker room.

She said her head was pounding from the humiliation and she feared what might come next. But what was happening at that moment changed her life: A male officer was secretly holding his cellphone and its tiny camera between the bars on the window, making a video clip that would ultimately expose more than Hemy's nakedness.

The clip began circulating phone to phone, e-mail to e-mail. Eventually it was posted on YouTube and other Internet sites, to be viewed by millions. What started as cheap voyeurism escalated into an unstoppable cyberspace phenomenon, which forced the prime minister to establish an official inquiry that led to changes in police practice. The episode also underscored the growing power of amateur video, shot on cellphones and ever-tinier digital cameras, to hold the powerful to account.

Dollars and hopes sky-high already

By Bob Ryan at The Boston Globe (15.11.2006).

Start with this: Investing in a pitcher is like putting your hard-earned money into a Broadway show.

The Red Sox have offered $51.1 million to the Seibu Lions merely for the right to talk contract with Mr. Matsuzaka. Now the real fun starts. They will be bargaining with the legendary Scott Boras, a hard-nosed fellow whose very presence has been known to scare off people in the past. Some are saying his involvement discouraged a team or two from bidding on Matsuzaka. But the Red Sox aren't afraid of Boras. Indeed, he and Theo Epstein have a history of compatibility, dating from Theo's tenure with the Padres.

Interview with Alain Badiou

Translated by Lauren Sedofsky at Artforum (November 2006) :

Alain Badiou has arrived at what is perhaps the crowning moment of his career. His magnum opus of 1988, Being and Event, was finally published in English this year. His much-anticipated sequel, Logiques des mondes (Logics of Worlds)—his first major philosophical work in eighteen years—appeared in France in March. And in February, Century, transcriptions of the seminar Badiou gave at the Collège International de Philosophie between 1998 and 2001, will be published in English translation. Taking advantage of the occasion to revisit his ideas and their evolution, we invited Badiou once again to join in conversation with Lauren Sedofsky, who interviewed him in these pages more than a decade ago (“Being by Numbers,” Artforum, October 1994). Sedofsky's introduction and a brief excerpt are below; to read the rest of the text, pick up the November issue of Artforum.

La chute des trois tours du World Trade Center

Par Arno Mansouri à Réseau Voltaire (14.11.2006) :

Deux évènements survenus le 11 septembre 2001 ont été gommés de la mémoire collective : l’incendie de l’annexe de la Maison-Blanche et l’effondrement de la tour n°7 du World Trade Center qui n’avait été touchée par aucun avion. C’est bien normal, car ces faits ne sont pas intégrables à la version gouvernementale des attentats et, par leur existence même, la contredisent partiellement. Ils ne sont donc pas même mentionnés dans le rapport de la Commission d’enquête présidentielle. Dans son livre Le Procès du 11 septembre , Victor Thorn revient en détail sur l’effondrement « mimétique » de la tour 7 qui abritait une base de la CIA. Son éditeur français, Arno Mansouri, résume ici son propos.

International Lawyers File Suit against Rumsfeld in Germany

By Sarah Boseley at AFP/CommonDreams (14.11.2006) :

An international grouping of lawyers has filed a lawsuit calling on German prosecutors to investigate outgoing US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for allegedly sanctioning torture.

The 220-page suit is being brought on behalf of 11 former Iraqi detainees of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad and one Saudi currently being held at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The suit was filed to Germany's federal prosecutor Monika Harms at her offices in the western city of Karlsruhe, said Hannes Honecker, the secretary-general of the Germany-based Republican Attorneys' Association Tuesday.

German law allows the pursuit of warcrimes cases regardless of where they originate in the world.

Les débuts "live" de Miles Davis

Par Sylvain Siclier au Monde (13.11.2006).

Continue reading "Les débuts "live" de Miles Davis"

Descartes: A Biography

By Karen Detlefsen at Philosophical Reviews (08.11.2006). Reviews Desmond M. Clarke, Descartes: A Biography, Cambridge University Press, 2006, 520pp., $40.00 :

There has developed, in recent years, a small industry in the writing of philosophical biographies -- books detailing the lives of great philosophers, providing background to the development of their thoughts, or describing the relationships between philosophers. Descartes scholarship is no exception, and Desmond Clarke's recently published biography joins other titles on Descartes published in the last decade or so by Stephen Gaukroger, Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, and Richard Watson.^[1] Clarke's work is notable for its exhaustive detail, drawing helpfully upon Descartes' voluminous and revealing correspondence to reconstruct as best as possible Descartes' movements and mindsets throughout his almost 54 years of life. His focus is on Descartes' life, but he also provides succinct and accessible descriptions of the major developments in Descartes' philosophical thinking. Another virtue of the book is the context -- theological, political, social, and scientific -- that Clarke provides for the reader to better understand Descartes as a person and as an intellectual. This biography will appeal to the scholar of Descartes and the seventeenth century, as well as to other philosophers interested in the lives of the greatest thinkers in their profession's history. It is also appropriate for a lay reader keen on gaining insight into Descartes' contribution to philosophy and why he is considered to be such a pivotal figure in the history of the discipline.

Everyman's philosopher

By Scott McLemee at The LA Times (05.11.2006). Reviews Robert D. Richardson, William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism, Houghton Mifflin, 622 pp., $30 :

Richardson is the author of highly respected biographies of Emerson and Thoreau, and in turning to William James, he has the advantage of writing about the one American philosopher whose place in literary history is assured. Nor is this simply a matter of being the older brother of author and critic Henry James. That was a complicated bit of luck in any case — for "Harry" (as the novelist is disconcertingly called throughout the book, to distinguish him from their father, also named Henry) found his way to international literary eminence when he was barely out of adolescence, while the high-strung older brother spent much of his 20s in search of a definite vocation. The agonizing process of "finding himself" was complicated by James' tendency to have regular and devastating periods of total inner collapse — what today would likely be diagnosed as bouts of clinical depression.

Call It What It Is: A Massacre

By Uri Avnery at Gush Shalom/Counter Currents (14.11.2006).

True Blue Populists

By Paul Krugman at The NY Times/TruthOut (13.11.2006).

YouTube and the Cultural Studies Classroom

By Christopher Conway at Inside Higher Ed (13.11.2006) :

OK, that’s all nice, but what can YouTube do for professors, apart from giving them something to look at during their lunch breaks? Inside Higher Ed has reported on the ways in which YouTube is causing consternation among academics because it is being used by students to stage moments of guerilla theater in the classroom, record lectures without permission and ridicule their professors. Indeed, a search on YouTube for videos of professors can bring up disquieting clips of faculty behaving strangely in front of their students, like the professor who coolly walks over to a student who answers a ringing cell phone in class, politely asks for the device, and then violently smashes it on the floor before continuing on with his lecture as if nothing had happened. It could be staged (authenticity is more often than not a fiction on YouTube) but it is still disturbing.

But I would like to argue for an altogether different take on YouTube, one centered on the ways in which this medium can enrich the learning experience of college students by providing video realia to accompany their textbooks, in-class documentaries and course lectures. Although I can’t speak to the applicability of YouTube to every discipline, in what follows I make a case for how the service can be harnessed by professors in the humanities and social sciences.

New Faces, Same Agenda

By Stephen Lendman at Global Research (13.11.2006).

A Civilizing Mission

By Amitava Kumar at The Naiton (27.11.2006 Issue). Reviews The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad, Columbia, 664 pages, June 2006.

Also see Editorial review at Amazon.com.

The Body in Pain

By Arthur C. Danto on Fernando Botero at The Nation (27.11.2006 Issue).

Yasser Arafat a-t-il été assassiné ?

Par Amnon Kapeliouk au Monde Diplomatique (Novembre 2006) :

Un an après le décès de Yasser Arafat, que le général Sharon présentait comme l’obstacle principal à la paix, l’impasse est totale : non seulement Israël poursuit la colonisation, mais la vie quotidienne des Palestiniens reste très difficile – même dans la prison qu’est devenu Gaza « libéré ». Pis : la guerre civile que le raïs voulait éviter menace. C’est dans ce contexte que les médias évoquent l’hypothèse d’un empoisonnement...

Schooled for a spell of trouble

By Shelley Gare at The Australian (11.11.2006). "Jokes about softening of education standards would be funnier if they weren't so true."

Japan general's grandson has hopes for Eastwood film

By Linda Sieg at Reuters/AlertNet (12.11.2006). Interviews Yoshitaka Shindo about Letters from Iwojima and his grandfather Lieutenant-General Tadamichi Kuribayashi.

Le désastre militaire en Irak

Par Arthur Lepic à Réseau Voltaire (10.11.2006) :

L’état-major des États-Unis tient Donald Rumsfeld pour responsable du désastre militaire en Irak. Non pas que le secrétaire à la Défense soit responsable de la guerre, mais parce qu’il n’a pas donné aux Forces armées tous les moyens qu’elles réclamaient. La révolte des généraux a alimenté le mécontentement d’une opinion publique militarisée qui a sanctionné l’administration Bush par les urnes. Arthur Lepic dresse le bilan caché de la guerre en Irak.

Persée et la Méduse

"Le regard triomphe de l'œil" par Guy Masst à Psychanalyse-Paris.com (26.10.2006) :

Dans la mélancolie, nous dit Freud, « ce qui règne dans le surmoi est une pure pulsion de mort… Un surmoi surfort fait rage contre le moi avec une violence sans ménagement comme s’il s’était emparé de tout le sadisme disponible… Ce qui règne dès lors dans le surmoi est une culture pure de la pulsion de mort... si le moi ne se défend pas contre son tyran c’est la mort » (Freud, « Le moi et le ça »). Ce surmoi est figuré dans l’histoire de Persée par la Méduse, culture pure de la pulsion de mort. L’œil de la Méduse a le pouvoir de pétrifier quiconque le croise. Il est la négation du devenir, la négation du ça, la négation de l’inconscient. C’est un œil catégorique. « Catégorie » en grec signifie procéder à une accusation : — Tu es A et pas non-A ! Tu es statique et non pas dynamique, tu n’as pas plus le droit de parler qu’un cadavre, tranche la catégorie foudroyante. Nous voilà transformés en objet. Combien de fois n’avons-nous pas été métamorphosés en statue mélancolique et muette par les yeux de quelque Méduse, les yeux de quelque grand Autre ? Heureusement, comme nous le verrons dans cette histoire, le regard, qui relève du ça, triomphe de l’œil, sphère matérielle statique et mortifère.

Jonathan Miller on Atheism

The Atheist Mama :

Very much by accident, I came across a rare television series about atheism,  Jonathan Miller’s A Rough History of Disbelief, produced for BBC 4 in England. It’s a three-part program in which Miller explores the origins, development, and current implications of atheism through conversations with scientists, historians, writers, and philosophers. Miller himself is articulate and insightful, and his personal observations bind the series together in a very compelling way.

One minor criticism I have is the captioning; not only is it distracting, but often inaccurate. If you can get past that, however, it is an hour well-spent.

Part 2 can be found here, but part 3 seems to have disappeared since I first found it a month ago. This really is a shame; perhaps someone out there can make sure it finds its way back.

Enjoy!

Israel : Olmert brings Lieberman’s far-right party into government

From WSWS (13.11.2006) :

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has brought Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the far-right Israel Beitenu (Israel is Our Home) party, into his cabinet as deputy prime minister. Lieberman has been given the specially created post of minister of strategic affairs, dealing with threats against Israel, with a focus on Iran.

As a member of the foreign and defence committees and other “security cabinets,” and reporting directly to the prime minister, Lieberman will be one of the inner circle making Israel’s key decisions. He will be more powerful than either the defence or foreign ministers, Amir Peretz and Zippi Livni, both of whom are from the Labour Party.

Lieberman is an ultra-nationalist and notorious racist, who in 2001 advocated using nuclear weapons against Tehran as well as bombing Palestinian civilians and targeting Egypt’s Aswan High Dam. He is in favour of the ethnic cleansing of Israeli Arabs.

The War Crimes Case Against Rumsfeld

"Don't Leave Town, Don" by Marjorie Cohn at CounterPunch (10.11.2006).

Japan's New Miracle Economy: Neoliberalism and the Poverty of Wealth

By Ronald Dore at Japan Focus (09.11.2006) :

More striking is the new voice concerned with growing poverty. Books on income distribution, social mobility, the withering of aspiration, pour off the press at the rate of one a week, all deploring the new "divided society." That 28 percent of children in Osaka and 24 percent in Tokyo qualify for free school meals and textbooks has become one of the most quoted statistics. The wage figures I quoted above were those for the labor aristocracy in the big firms. In smaller firms employing half the labor force, wages fell by 10, not 6 percent.

Yet, there is no effective political force to organize the backlash and mobilize sentiment among the electorate at large. Until that happens, investors can relax. The Abe Cabinet will continue to promote the conversion of Japan to Anglo-Saxon capitalism.

The Ethnic Detective and the Atomic Bomb: A Japanese American Mystery series

By Mark Schreiber at Japan Focus (08.11.2006) :

This past summer, I was delighted to discover a new "ethnic detective" character named Masuo "Mas" Arai, an elderly Japanese American gardener whose credentials include a green thumb and a nose for sniffing out criminals. The creation of Los Angeles-based journalist and author Naomi Hirahara, Arai made his literary debut in 2004 in "Summer of the BIG BACHI." A year later he was assisting the NYPD in "Gasa-Gasa Girl." This year, he's back cruising the L.A. freeways in his battered pickup truck in "Snakeskin Shamisen," where a traditional Okinawan musical instrument left at the scene of the crime led him to the killer.

Reenacting War

"Reflections on a Country Losing Its Humanity" by Doug Troutman at TomDispatch (10.11.2006).

Massacre of Palestinian Women and Children

Massacre and kidnapping reported at Global Research (10.11.2006) | Video (WMV). Hard to connect. I uploaded this video on my other weblog at VOX, Ça ne va pas mieux (12.11.2006).

From AP/MSNBC (11.11.2006) :

UNITED NATIONS - The United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council draft resolution Saturday that sought to condemn an Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip and demand Israeli troops pull out of the territory.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said the Arab-backed draft resolution was “biased against Israel and politically motivated.”

“This resolution does not display an evenhanded characterization of the recent events in Gaza, nor does it advance the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace to which we aspire and for which we are working assiduously,” he told the Security Council.

The veto unleashed a flurry of criticism in the Middle East.

“This decision by the U.S. government gives unlimited cover to commit more massacres of innocent Palestinians,” said Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian government. “This is a shame on the American administration, which says it is trying to promote human rights and democracy in the Middle East.”

Ultraman . . . forever

By Mark Schilling at The Japan Times (12.12.2006).

Japon : la radio d'Etat sommée de couvrir davantage les méfaits de Pyongyang

Du Monde (10.11.2006) :

Le gouvernement japonais a ordonné vendredi au groupe d'audiovisuel public NHK de consacrer plus de temps d'antenne au drame des enlèvements de ressortissants nippons par la Corée du Nord pendant la Guerre froide.

Le gouvernement conservateur avait reçu le feu vert cette semaine du Conseil de régulation de la radio, un comité d'experts qui conseille le ministre de la Communication Yoshihide Suga.

Mais cette décision sans précédent risque de s'attirer les foudres de ceux qui estiment qu'une telle injonction violerait la liberté de la presse.

M. Suga avait annoncé fin octobre son désir d'obliger la NHK, qui consacre déjà une très large couverture aux enlèvements dans ses émissions destinées au Japon, à accorder davantage de temps d'antenne à cette question ultrasensible dans ses programmes radiophoniques destinés à l'étranger.

C'est précisément la violation:

Roger Pulvers :

First, the ruling LDP has become much more bolshie, if you will, when it comes to directly pressuring the broadcaster. A program on the excellent NHK news show "Close Up Gendai," aired on March 28, 2005, took up the issue of school authorities forcing teachers to sing the national anthem at graduation ceremonies, bringing out the teachers' viewpoints. LDP representatives in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly strongly attacked the program as "biased."

Second, in recent years major scandals have eroded the public's trust in NHK. Chief producers have been helping themselves to millions of yen by padding their budgets with fictitious expenses. One of them, was sentenced this March to five years in jail for embezzlement.

Politicians must demonstrate their support for a truly independent national broadcaster and desist from hiding their reactionary agendas behind a screen of "fairness and neutrality." NHK, for its part, must get its act together and eliminate loose management that allows for corrupt practices. But on their part, it's surely high time the Japanese people got their own act together regarding their national broadcaster. It's called "belief in freedom of expression, even when that expression may be unpopular." And it is only Act One in the long drama called democracy.