Guess I'm not quite over my Star Wars issues quite yet.

As Father Ted once put it, "fascists are men who wear black and run round telling people what to do. Priests are.... well... more drink!" And so it is with Imperial officers here.

Taking the Sith

Okay, I think I've worked out the last of my Star Wars issues. It has taken a good couple of days, and a great deal of sneaking around the rubbish bins of Skywalker Ranch rooting around for discarded hard-drives and, when that failed, long hours of communion with The Force. Finally, though, Class Worrier is happy to host the first review of The Revenge of the Sith, based almost entirely on information received directly from midi-chlorians. Their verdict: better than you’d expected.

The Sith rounds out the Star Wars cycle with Anakin’s head in a black helmet. Like the excellent Empire Strikes Back (the most consistently rewatchable of the cycle), you know that it’s going to end on a downbeat. Unlike Empire, this movie isn’t directed by Irvin Kershner, but by his student, the vastly less ept George Lucas, whose strong points are mythics and visuals and not, as we’ve found out by watching the past two films over and over, character development, dialogue, psychology or concessions to intelligent viewers. Luckily, this film lets him play to his strengths, and for that, I think we’re all willing to dumb ourselves down a little. If in the previous films we wanted for characterization and more intelligent dialogue (failing which, less talking altogether) in this film, all we want is dark closure. And some cool space ships.

And this the film provides. No longer motivated by a barely outlined Oedipal drive, or by precociousness, Anakin is now more realistically motivated by fears of Padme’s death. Yes, it’s exactly like The Matrix: Reloaded. And sometimes, even better.

This is a fair achievement given the resources the film has to work with. Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan fails to communicate the gravity or charm in three episodes that Alec Guinness achieved in twenty minutes of screentime. Hayden Christensen is just as wooden as he was in Attack of the Clones – clearly, he’s been taking lessons from Keanu Reaves. But Lucas has been watching the Wachowski brothers, and picked up a trick or two about filming fight sequences. No bullet time, but quite the opposite – fantastically fluid and choreographed real-time light saber fight sequences, with a speed to make Jackie Chan's eyes water. Mace Windu is, of course, defeated by skullduggery – but in the battle between Anakin and Dooku (which rather hamfistedly quotes the battle that Vader and Skywalker have at the end of Return of the Jedi), and in the spectacular lavalamp sequence that births Vader from fire, the fight sequences are balletic.

But character development there is, of a kind. Yoda emerges as the sort of guru that Hindu nationalists, and the white people who lap up their excretions, have been pining for since the 1960s. Complex, wise, Gnostic, and good with an edge weapon. The Emperor unmasks himself with suitable bassassery. And we even get to catch a glimpse of the Wookie’s history of slavery. Natalie Portman is wasted, of course. But that’s okay. It’s not really about her, or about Lucas’ appalling skills as a director (actors report that his standard and oft-repeated guideline is “faster, more intense”). This is about the film’s subconscious, about the context in which it was made.

In the beginning, Star Wars was made in defiance of the big studios – it knew where to position itself in the battle of good against evil, even as it was, a big-budget film coming out of the Fox studios. And, largely because of the contract Lucas made with Fox – with Fox shrugging off the merchandise rights – Star Wars is a vast franchise. Lucas knows evil intimately, and it shows. In the end the bad guys triumph hamfistedly, through attrition, and backed up with a mighty horn section. Who could ask for anything more?

The Star Wars Saga – an all-purpose post-colonial review

It began, as the best stories do, half way through .. a battle against Empire... 1970s....liberation struggle... a new hope... New International Economic Order... Wizardry... Nelson Mandela... Jedi Nationalism... Dark Father, idiot, it’s Dark Father... Good droid, bad droid.. AT-AT is anagram of Tata: Coincidence? … the slug and the princess … Ewoks: Muppetry of the penis… Indigenous peoples as soft toys… Mark Hamill scarcely believable as human, let alone Jedi…. Vast pots of LucasCash.. And so after two decades… Trade disputes, taxes… World Trade Organization… thinly-veiled-racial-stereotypes... Culture Wars…Urban fantasy: "The Entire Planet’s a City".. Who mops up on Coruscant? … Republic Complacency.. Democratic party… Imperial overstretch… Iraq… Jedi as terrorist… death in childbirth… what a wookie…Emperor… Karl Rove … Grima Wormtongue … no redeeming value… can’t wait for episode seven.

Self portrait machine

Following in the footsteps of the Brooke brothers, I thought I'd give the South Park self-portrait machine a go. Feel my wrath and tremble.

Galileo Galileo

Now that Kurt Waldheim has been named Pope, the world can get back to business. And business is what my mate Ignacio Chapela's getting back at (great link, no?), having filed suit against the Regents at the University of California at Berkeley.

His suit has three barrels - the first, is that he's a victim of retaliation for blowing the whistle on the biotechnology industry. The second is that he has been discriminated against on grouds of race (throughout the UC system, people of colour are denied tenure far more often, other things being equal), and third - and I like this the best - that he's a victim of fraud. Why fraud? Ignacio's colourful lawyer puts it like this: when you buy a house, and the owner knows it's on a fault line but doesn't tell you, that's fraud. When you apply for tenure, but you're not told that you had to have opinions in keeping with those on the tenure committee, that's fraud too.

The University is currently reviewing his tenure case, but he's pressing ahead with the suit in part so as to retain his rights to redress (a statute of limitations was about to kick in) but in part so that he can blow the whistle on all this a little more loudly. To aid in his amplification, he's got a website www.pulseofscience.org on which you can find one of the worst graphs ever. I have taken a particular dislike to this particular piece of data presentation, in no small part because I once had to wear it. (Yes, that's me wearing a Chancellor-encrusted bag on my head.)

Timeless observations on Christianity, civilisation, and bread in the US

Who said this, and when?

"..time has passed, and in that time the Christian world has revealed itself as morally bankrupt and politically unstable. The Tunisians were quite right in 1956 - and it was a very significant moment in Western (and African) history - when they countered the French justification for remaining in North Africa with the question "Are the French ready for self-government?" Again, the terms "civilized" and "Christian" begin to have a very strange ring, particularly in the ears of those who have been judged to be neither civilized nor Christian, when a Christian nation surrenders to a foul and violent orgy, as Germany did during the Third Reich."

That's right. James Baldwin, 1963, in The Fire Next Time (pp51-52) where he also penned this fine observation (p43), which is tremendously germane to my interests at the moment, being as I am in the US, and researching as I am, food:

To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread. It will be a great day for America, incidentally, when we begin to eat bread again, instead of the blasphemous and tasteless foam rubber that we have substituted for it. And I am not being frivolous now, either. Something very sinister happens to the people of a country when they begin to distrust their own reactions as deeply as they do here, and become as joyless as they have become.

Incidentally, the best places to eat bread again in the Bay Area are to be found here, at this range of worker owned cooperatives, where the bread's not bitter, and the workforce as un-alienated as it's possible to be in these parts.

Lunacy

Today is a day of parts. Thanks to Hal Berstram I have discovered that Robert Kilroy-Silk's odious "Veritas" party is actually a cover for sick Marmite-related S&M activities. Thanks to the BBC, I have discovered this splendid picture, showing participants negotiating a hurdle at the Porcine Olympics. And from the good folk at the New Economics Foundation in London, I am pleased to share a call for jokes concerning the new President of the World Bank, in a new Wolfowit campaign.

The Turtle Does The UK Election

The incisive Hal Bertram, longtime friend of the Turtle, has now found an online, and hopefully not too temporary, home in the bosom of the People's Beast. Your one stop shop for pointed and healthy cynicism - the Turtle's Election Blog - is now open for business.

Rome from Home

Bit late, this, but that's because I've been in Texas, where I managed to pick up a remarkable insult from Jagdish Bhagwati: "That Patel Fellow! You know, it's an oxymoron. You can't be a Gujarati and be a marxist." Anyway, enough about me. As I say, a bit late, but nonetheless an important bit of popery here and a fine new blog, the Chronicles of Ryan, here.

ParasiteWatch

[Another delayed posting] Since the last posting here on Class Worrier, two presidents have been selected. With profound clairvoyance, Mugabe got the two thirds majority he thought he would in Zimbabwe, while Wolfowitz passed, unhindered, into a comfy chair on K Street. George Monbiot, incidentally, seems to agree with the Worrier on the utility of Wolf-2 for those opposed to the Bank. Clever boy.

Now, as predicted, bottom-feeding is rife in Washington DC. Here's the text of an invitation doing the rounds at the moment:

We are writing to invite your organization to be part of the Host Committee for a reception commemorating James D. Wolfensohn’s tenure as President of the Bank. The event, Civil Society and the World Bank, will take place on May 26, 2005 ... As Mr. Wolfensohn’s term comes to an end, the Bank Information Center, InterAction, and Oxfam America are organizing a reception to recognize his personal role in creating space for civic engagement. This space has allowed civil society to promote more equitable and sustainable development practices at the Bank. ... Invited guests would include civil society leaders; World Bank directors, management, and staff; members of Congress and other US Government officials; diplomatic corps; and senior IMF, IDB, and other IFI officials. The formal program – of about 45 minutes – would include a series of short speeches and an open space for reflection and comment. Mr. Wolfensohn has already agreed to attend and speak at the event. Host Committee members will be invited to attend one or two planning sessions to help with arrangements, offer their logo for the formal invitations, and make a contribution of $500 to help cover the event costs. If the suggested contribution is difficult at this time, please feel free to provide as much as is comfortable."

Space for civic engagement? This is the guy who set about rebranding the World Bank so that it became a Listening Bank, who listened to the World Commission on Dams, and the Extractive Industry Review, decided that he didn't like what he was hearing, and told civil society to go fuck itself. And he has created space for civic engagement? This invitation comes from organisations that purport to be among the Bank's most vigorous critics, and whose websites promote a patina of heartfelt virtue not unlike the Bank's own shoulder-on-sleeve liberalism.

We've enough trouble with 'fake' NGOs, ones funded and set up by capital to deflect and baffle criticism from social movements. When the 'real' NGOs prove to be such craven fools, it does rather suggest that 'progressive NGO' is a contradiction in terms. With the exception of the excellent Focus on the Global South, it's hard to think of an NGO that isn't, at some level, deeply reactionary. Sometimes, it's hard not to want to side with the right, and their swivel-eyed lunacy, such as the delerious NGOWatch.org. At least with the American Enterprise Institute, you know what you're getting. And with friends like the Bank Information Centre, InterAction and Oxfam America, who needs enemies?

[Update: The Bank Information Centre has decided that it's probably not a good idea to do this. Sensible move, lads.]