Hier j'ai regardé non-stop you tube , Sherlock Holmes avec Rathbone et Bewitched . J'ai appris quelques mots , blade  gory, claw , seesaw,pitted, withers et une citation de Shakespeare :
The quality of mercy is not strain'd ,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath . It is twice blest :
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes .
Aussi une expression intéressante : " laying on of hands " witch means "the application of a faith healer's hands to the patient's body"

Une vieille page dans mon journal: 
Cet après -midi ,  dans l'autre appartement , pour jouer  sur le Bösendorfer . Après , à la cinémathèque ,  pour voir  " Les yeux de la momie Ma"  (1918) de Lubitsch. Fatiguée, j'achète une canette de coca et entre dans la salle . Un monsieur, quelques rangées  derrière moi, se penche  vers moi et me dit très fort : "Mademoiselle, vous ne savez pas qu'il est interdit de manger et de boire dans les salles de la cinémathèque française ?" Je me retourne  à peine  pour le regarder et puis, rien . Je continue  à boire lentement mon coca avec la paille .
Le snobisme des gens de la cinémathèque,  des employés ainsi que des habitués . Une fois, arrivée cinq minutes  en retard,  après le commencement du film,  on n'a pas voulu me vendre un ticket :   " Vous êtes ici à la cinémathèque française et non pas dans un cinéma de quartier "
J'ai aimé ce film de Lubitsch, même si j'ai eu un peu peur car Jannings avait l'air très méchant et à la fin il tue Pola Negri .
 

Allemagne - 1918 - 58’

D. a vu deux films ce matin avec Carole Lombard, Fools for Scandale (1938, avec Fernand Gravet, réalisé par Mervyn Le Roy) et Lady by Choice (1934, avec May Robson, réalisé par David Burton).

In Paris, incognito American movie star Kay Winters meets Rene, an apparently impoverished local, who is wearing evening clothes and offers to show her the real Paris. Although she is supposed to attend a dinner given by Lady Paula Malverton, she is so charmed by Rene that she agrees. After sightseeing, they have dinner at the same restaurant where Lady Malverton has brought her guests. Recognizing Rene, who had also been invited to her party, Lady Malverton calls him over to say hello. When he returns to his table, Kay has gone, but has left a sketch and a note asking him to meet her for lunch the next day at the fountain in Montmartre. After removing her dark wig, Kay returns to her hotel, where insurance salesman Phillip Chester, who is in love with her, is waiting. The next day, Rene oversleeps and his friend, Dewey Gilson, takes too long retrieving Rene's only daytime suit from Mme. Brioche's pawn shop. When Rene finally arrives at the fountain, he is wearing two oriental carpets and a turban appropriated from a passing salesman. As Rene talks with Kay, two elderly female tourists approach, thinking that Rene is selling the carpets, and argue with him and Kay over who can buy them. In a scuffle, Kay and one of the women each grab a carpet, forcing Rene to run away in his underwear. He learns later that she is a movie star from his cab driver and immediately phones her hotel, but discovers that she has left for London. He follows her there, arriving at her house during a masquerade party. She invites Rene to stay for dinner, and Lady Malverton insists that he make his specialty, crepes suzette. The crepes are so good that Kay jokingly offers him a job as her cook. After the party, Phillip begs Kay to stop work and marry him, but she postpones a decision. Not having seen Rene leave, Lady Malverton sneaks into Kay's house to see if she can find him. He tells her that he has taken a job as a cook, and delighted, Lady Malverton spreads the gossip. The next morning, after Kay learns his plan, she begs Rene to leave before he ruins her reputation. It is too late, however, as Lady Malverton's gossip has already attracted news reporters. As Rene will not leave, Kay agrees to keep him on as a servant. At the same time, she decides to marry Phillip and instructs her maid, Myrtle, to serve them an engagement dinner, which Rene does his best to spoil. Phillip and Kay quarrel and he walks out. Rene forces Kay to admit that she loves him, but she protests that she cannot marry him because of the difference in their status. Coldly, he tells her that he is a marquis and leaves. Kay runs after him into the rain. For shelter they duck into a doorway and find themselves on stage at the opera house. Laughing at their plight, they kiss for the audience.

 
 

Melvyn's newsletter - Sturm und Drang - 14/10/2010

  Hello,
I'm sorry this is late. I only came back from America yesterday. I went soon after the last programme and thought I could do Sturm und Drang in the longueurs while filming. When you have written a programme and your next job is to present it there are many longueurs, while the cameramen and the director and the sound man decide on the precise place on which you should be shot and then go away into the far distance to do poetic cutaways which will enhance the finished film. These longueurs can last for hours. On a film set people specialise in crossword puzzles or tarot cards. Some of them write hit plays. I thought that I could assemble what I wanted to say about Sturm und Drang.
But, dear reader, I'd lost the notes. I searched high and low - or more accurately horizontally in my bag - and found plenty of notes on Sturm und Drang but none of my notes on my notes on Sturm und Drang. So I apologise to the three contributors who had a great deal to say after the programme and I made a great number of notes. They are still somewhere in Broadcasting House, probably in a wastepaper basket which may be, you may think, where they belong.
We were filming sequences for a BBC 2 documentary on the impact of the King James Bible, 1611-2011. This is based on the book that I've written and we stormed America - standard class all the way - five different cities in seven days from Washington deep into South Carolina. We finally ended up in swamp country surrounded by the shacks in which slaves had lived and doing a piece to camera from the church they had built in the middle of this settlement.
It was an incredible tour. The 1682 Quaker church which was plain beautiful; the Lincoln Memorial for the Martin Luther King sequence as well as the speech of Lincoln himself; down in South Carolina for the slaves and the spirituals and the Bible stories which saw them through - but that's all to come.
When you get back to the hotel - or, to be more accurate, motel - after an average of five or six hours a day, crushed with the equipment in a small van, the only sane option is to have a shower, get a sandwich and watch television. The Chilean miners were the big story. In fact, CNN became 24-hour Chilean miners for as long as I was there. It was an amazing story. Quite soon, however, the attention to the drama which had - in terms of live television rather undramatically - a happy ending - the spin-offs began. The President of Chile decided that he would make an umpteen-hour speech to the world which he knew was watching. The commentators back in the USA worked out very quickly how much each miner would get from newspapers and sponsorship deals and local millionaires and wine merchants and so on. The jokesters came out with the jokes ...
The next big story on television was the bullying story. There is now a great deal of bullying on Facebook, it seems, and adolescents are being driven to suicide by this internet bullying as well as direct bullying at school. In a robust and exemplary American fashion, this has been taken up with fury by the commentators who are trying to flush it out and hunt it down.
And, of course, there were the new words, or new to me. Perhaps not to you. The word 'unfriended' was used again and again. Young people who are on Facebook were desolate when they were 'unfriended', i.e., someone they'd thought of as a friend had pulled out of the relationship and decided not to communicate with them again. It's a neat word and I expect it to stick. There was also a lot about the mortgage business with the phrase 'deficit hangover' occurring several times. We were told that many people in America still had a deficit hangover from what they'd spent last Christmas. Good again. One Republican lady told a Democrat gentleman who was talking what she clearly thought of as soft socialism to 'man up'. This was later interpreted as an attack on his virility. Shops which were going into sales told us that they were 'overstocked'. And finally people who made ludicrous remarks on the electioneering circuit were called 'loose-lipped'.
I would guess that at least two of those will get into the OED in time - if they're not already there.
Very sorry about the Sturm und Drang.
Best wishes
Melvyn Bragg
(trouvé cet article sur le site de la BBC)

Robert Scheer is a journalist in the gadfly tradition of Lincoln Steffens, I. F. Stone and Seymour Hersh. His latest book, "The Great American Stickup," blames the "captains of finance" for causing the 2008 "meltdown" of the global economy in the first place and then profiting from the tax dollars that were thrown at the problem — "a giant hustle that served the richest of the rich," as he puts it, "and left the rest of us holding the bag."
We've been reading Scheer's informed, edgy prose since his days at Ramparts magazine, and his career has included a long stint as a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and, more recently, the founding of the website Truthdig. By now, he is so practiced at investigative journalism and advocacy journalism that his book is like a strong dose of black coffee — bracing and eye-opening.

 Remarkably, Scheer is capable of making sense of something that Victorian thinker Thomas Carlyle rightfully called "the dismal science," that is, the workings of the economy. And he is not only willing but downright eager to name names, including such now-dubious gurus as Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Alan Greenspan, among others. Without sacrificing the subtleties and nuances of his subject, Scheer (along with his sons Christopher and Joshua Scheer) leads us briskly through the policy-making of the last three presidents and their advisors and argues that Democrats and Republicans share the blame.
"After the inauguration, the new Obama administration made it clear from day one that pleasing Wall Street rather than distraught homeowners would be the focal point of policy," he writes. "For all the brave talk about transparency and accountability in the banking bailout, [Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner] gave the swindlers who got us into this mess yet another blank check to buy up the 'toxic assets' they gleefully created."
Indeed, Scheer always allows himself the luxury — and gives his readers the pleasure — of verbal pyrotechnics that would be out of bounds in a newspaper. Thus, for example, he complains that regulators merely watched as "the giant banks, led by executives and boards seeking fast profits, joined in a mad feeding frenzy, gobbling up so-called liars' loans given out willy-nilly by off-brand lenders that are almost now bankrupt."
Scheer is plainly a progressive but also, and above all, a populist. "If we as a people learn anything from this crash, it should be that there are no adults watching the store, only a tiny elite of self-interested multimillionaires and billionaires making decisions for the rest of us," he concludes. "As long as we cede that power to them, we can expect to continue getting bilked."
On that point, I suspect, a great many of his readers, Democrats and Republicans alike, will agree.
By Jonathan Kirsch
Kirsch is book editor of the Jewish Journal and author of, most recently, "The Grand Inquisitor's Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God."

The New York Times' John Burns yesterday responded to (and complained about) criticisms -- voiced by me, Julian Assange and others -- over his gossipy, People Magazine-style "profile" of Assange, which his newspaper centrally featured as part of its coverage of the WikiLeaks document release.  In a self-justifying interview with Yahoo! News' Michael Calderone, Burns makes several comments worth examining:

Burns said he doesn't "recall ever having been the subject of such absolutely, relentless vituperation" following a story in his 35 years at the Times. He said his email inbox has been full of denunciations from readers and a number of academics at top-tier schools such as Harvard, Yale, and MIT.  Some, he said, used "language that I don't think they would use at their own dinner table."

• Continue reading

This is really good to hear:  quite encouraging.  Apparently, many people become quite angry when the newspaper which did more to enable the attack on Iraq than any other media outlet in the world covered one of the most significant war leaks in American history -- documents detailing the deaths of more than 100,000 human beings in that war and the heinous abuse of thousands of others -- by assigning its most celebrated war correspondent and London Bureau Chief to studiously examine and malign the totally irrelevant personality quirks, alleged mental health, and various personal relationships of Julian Assange.  Imagine that.  Then we have this from Burns:

Such heated reactions to the profile, Burns said, shows "just how embittered the American discourse on these two wars has become."

Oh my, how upsetting.  People are so very "embittered," and over what?  Just a couple of decade-long wars that have spilled enormous amounts of innocent blood, devastated two countries for no good reason, and spawned a worldwide American regime of torture, lawless imprisonment, and brutal occupation.  It's nothing to get upset over.  People really need to lighten up.  And stop being so mean to John Burns.  That's what really matters.
After all -- as he himself told you just a couple of months ago -- there was just no way that he and his war-supporting media colleagues -- holding themselves out as preeminent, not-to-be-questioned experts on that country -- could possibly have known that an attack on Iraq would have led to such devastating violence and humanitarian catastrophe (except by listening to, rather than systematically ignoring, the huge numbers of people around the world loudly warning that exactly that could happen).  The last thing he should have to endure are insulting emails from people who seem to think that such episodes warrant anger and recrimination.  And that's to say nothing of the obvious irony of a reporter complaining about our "embittered discourse" after he just wrote one of the sleaziest, most vicious hit pieces seen in The New York Times in quite some time.
Then there's this:

The profile, Burns said, is "an absolutely standard journalistic endeavor that we would use with any story of similar importance in the United States" . . . . Burns added that the Times is "not in the business of hagiography" but in the "business of giving our readers the fullest context for these documents" and the Assange's motivations. "To suggest that doing that is some kind of grotesque journalistic sin, and makes me a sociopath," Burns said, "strikes me as pretty odd."

This is the heart of the matter.  What Burns did to Julian Assange is most certainly not a "standard journalistic endeavor" for The New York Times.  If anyone doubts that, please show me any article that paper has published which trashed the mental health, psyche and personality of a high-ranking American political or military official -- a Senator or a General or a President or a cabinet secretary or even a prominent lobbyist -- based on quotes from disgruntled associates of theirs.  That is not done, and it never would be.
This kind of character smear ("he's not in his right mind," pronounced a 25-year-old who sort of knows him) is reserved for people who don't matter in the world of establishment journalists -- i.e., people without power or standing in Washington and, especially, those whom American Government authorities scorn.  In official Washington, Assange is a contemptible loser -- the Pentagon hates him and wants him destroyed, and therefore the "reporters" who rely on,  admire and identify with Pentagon officials immediately adopt that perspective -- and that's why he was the target of this type of attack.  After I wrote my criticism of this article on Monday, I was contacted by Burns' co-writer, Ravi Somaiya, who defended this article from my criticisms.  I agreed to keep the exchange off-the-record at his insistence -- and I will do so -- but that was the question I kept asking:  point to any instance where the NYT ever subjected Someone Who Matters in Washington to this kind of personality and mental health trashing based on the gossip and condemnation of associates.  It does not exist.
As for Burns' pronouncement that "the Times is 'not in the business of hagiography'," he should probably remind himself of what he himself wrote about the Right Honorable Gen. Stanely McChrystal, after Burns had attacked Michael Hastings for daring to publish the General's own statements that reflected badly on him.  Here's what Burns wrote while falling all over himself in reverence of this Great American Warrior:

[A]ll that I know about General McChrystal suggests that he is, just as the Rolling Stone article suggested, a maverick of high self-belief and intensity, uncautioned in his disregard for the conventional, but for all that a soldier with a deep belief in the military's ideals of "duty, honor, country." Though handed what many would regard as a poisoned chalice in the Afghanistan command, he had worked relentlessly to rescue America’s fortunes there. . . . grave misfortune it is, considering what is lost to America in a commander as smart, resolute and as fit for purpose as General McChrystal . . . . 
General George S. Patton Jr. . . .  a man who was regarded at the time, like General McChrystal in Afghanistan, as the best, and the toughest, of America's war-fighting generals. . . . In Iraq, we barely glimpsed General McChrystal, then running the super-secret special operations missions that were crucial in turning the tide against Al Qaeda and the Sunni insurgency under General Petraeus’s command; but he, too, continued the pattern of access after he took command in Afghanistan in June 2009. . . .
Reporters, of course, do best when they keep their views to themselves, to retain their impartiality. But it's safe to say that many of the men and women who have covered General McChrystal as commander if Afghanistan, or in his previous role as the top United States special forces commander, admired him, and felt at least some unease about the elements in the Rolling Stone article that ended his career.

It seems Burns wrote that while standing and saluting in front of a large wall photograph of the General, or perhaps kneeling in front of it.  The only hint of a criticism was quite backhanded: that McCrystal  "blundered catastrophically" by failing to exercise sufficient caution when speaking to an Unestablished, Unaccepted, reckless, low-level loser like Michael Hastings, who simply did not know -- or refused to abide by -- the General-protecting rules that Real Reporters use when venerating covering for covering top military officials.  And despite writing 2,700 praise-filled words about McChrystal, Burns never once mentioned little things like his central involvement in the Pat Tillman fraud or the widespread detainee abuse in Iraq under his command, until a reader asked about it, and only then, he mentioned it in passing to dismiss it. Burns' view of McChrystal is the very definition of journalistic hagiography.
Or consider this NYT profile of Gen. McChrystal by Elisabeth Bumiller and Mark Mazzetti, after he was named to run the war in Afghanistan, that was more creepily worshipful than any Us Weekly profile of a movie star whose baby pictures they are desperate to publish.  It goes on and on with drooling praise, but this is how it begins:

Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the ascetic who is set to become the new top American commander in Afghanistan, usually eats just one meal a day, in the evening, to avoid sluggishness.
He is known for operating on a few hours’ sleep and for running to and from work while listening to audio books on an iPod. In Iraq, where he oversaw secret commando operations for five years, former intelligence officials say that he had an encyclopedic, even obsessive, knowledge about the lives of terrorists, and that he pushed his ranks aggressively to kill as many of them as possible.
But General McChrystal has also moved easily from the dark world to the light. Fellow officers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he is director, and former colleagues at the Council on Foreign Relations describe him as a warrior-scholar, comfortable with diplomats, politicians and the military man who would help promote him to his new job.
"He's lanky, smart, tough, a sneaky stealth soldier," said Maj. Gen. William Nash, a retired officer. "He’s got all the Special Ops attributes, plus an intellect."

That article also never mentioned the issue of detainee abuse -- no need to bother NYT readers with such unpleasantries about the Lanky Smart Tough Warrior who will win Afghanistan -- while the Tillman incident was buried in a paragraph near the end and dismissed as the "one blot on his otherwise impressive military record."  Remember, though:  "the Times is 'not in the business of hagiography'."  Upon McChrystal's firing, the Hillman Foundation's Charles Kaiser wrote a comprehensive piece documenting how the "unspoken rules" cited by Burns to attack Hastings were what led to widespread media protection and veneration of McChrystal, as embodied by the highly revealing though pernicious comments from CBS News' Lara Logan ("Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has").
"Hagiography" is exactly what the American establishment media does, when it comes to powerful American political and military leaders.  Slimy, personality-based hit pieces are reserved for those who are scorned by the powerful in Washington -- such as Julian Assange.  So subservient to the Pentagon's agenda was the media coverage of the WikiLeaked documents that even former high-level journalists are emphatically objecting, and naming names.  John Parker, former military reporter and fellow of the University of Maryland Knight Center for Specialized Journalism-Military Reporting, wrote an extraordinarily good letter yesterday:

The sad lack of coverage ("Sunday talk shows largely ignore WikiLeaks' Iraq files") of the leak of unfiltered, publicly owned information from the latest WikiLeak is disturbing, but not historically out of the ordinary for major American media.
The career trend of too many Pentagon journalists typically arrives at the same vanishing point: Over time they are co-opted by a combination of awe -- interacting so closely with the most powerfully romanticized force of violence in the history of humanity -- and the admirable and seductive allure of the sharp, amazingly focused demeanor of highly trained military minds. Top military officers have their s*** together and it's personally humbling for reporters who've never served to witness that kind of impeccable competence. These unspoken factors, not to mention the inner pull of reporters' innate patriotism, have lured otherwise smart journalists to abandon – justifiably in their minds – their professional obligation to treat all sources equally and skeptically.
Too many military reporters in the online/broadcast field have simply given up their watchdog role for the illusion of being a part of power. Example No. 1 of late is Tom Gjelten of NPR. . . Interviewed by his colleague on Oct. 22 about the latest WikiLeaks documents, this exchange happened:
__________

Robert Siegel: And reaction to the release today?
Gjelten: Well, the Pentagon is, understandably, very angry, as they were when the documents from Afghanistan were released. They said this decision to release them was made cavalierly. They do point out - and I can't say I disagree (emphasis Parker's) - that the period in Iraq that these documents covered was already very well chronicled. They say it does not bring new understanding to those events.
___________
There it is in black and white. Gjelten is lending his credibility to the Pentagon as "neutral" national journalist. . . . Gjelten, other Pentagon journalists and informed members of the public would benefit from watching "The Selling of the Pentagon," a 1971 documentary. It details how, in the height of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon sophisticatedly used taxpayer money against taxpayers in an effort to sway their opinions toward the Pentagon’s desires for unlimited war. Forty years later, the techniques of shaping public opinion via media has evolved exponentially. It has reached the point where flipping major journalists is a matter of painting in their personal numbers.

Precisely.  The Pentagon has long been devoted to destroying the credibility and reputation of WikiLeaks, and the military-revering John Burns and his war-enabling newspaper, as usual, lent its helping hand to the Government's agenda.  This is what NPR's Gjelten routinely does as well.  The Pulitzer-Prize-winning David Cay Johnston, formerly of the NYT, wrote his own letter yesterday supporting Parker, citing the media's Pentagon-parroting line (from Gjelten and others) that there is nothing new in the WikiLeaks documents, and wrote:  "If you want to ignore the facts or tell only the official version of events get a job as a flack."  That is the job they have, only they're employed by our major media outlets.  That's the principal problem.  They receive most of their benefits -- their access, their scoops, their sense of belonging, their money, their esteem -- from dutifully serving that role.
Of course, another major reason why these media figures are so eager to parrot the Government line -- to try to destroy Assange and insist that there's "nothing new" in these horrifying documents -- is because they cheered for these wars in the first place.  The Washington Post's Editorial Page Editor, Fred Hiatt, was one of the most vocal cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq, and so predictably, the Post (like NPR's Gjelten) ran an Editorial yesterday echoing the Pentagon and belittling the WikiLeaks documents as Nothing New Here.  If that's true, perhaps Hiatt can point to the article where the Post previously reported on the existence of Frago 242, the secret order which instructed American troops not to investigate Iraqi abuse, or perhaps he can explain why the Post's own Baghdad Bureau Chief for much of the war, Ellen Knickmeyer, finds plenty new in the WikiLeaks documents:  "Thanks to WikiLeaks, though, I now know the extent to which top American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world, as the Iraq mission exploded."
Media figures like Burns, Gjelten, Hiatt and the NYT want you to think there's nothing new in these documents, and to focus instead on Julian Assange's alleged personality flaws (or the prospects that he -- rather than the criminals he exposed -- should be prosecuted), because that way they hope you won't notice all the blood on their hands.  That's one major benefit.  The other is that they discharge their prime function of currying favor with and serving the interests of the powerful Washington figures whom they "cover."
* * * * *
There's one specific inaccuracy in Burns' response to me which I want to highlight.  The Yahoo! article states:  "Burns took issue with Greenwald's suggestion that he's 'a borderline-sociopath' who's now coping with the guilt of having 'enabled and cheered' on the Iraq war."  I didn't actually call Burns that.  What I wrote was that, in light of what these documents reveal, "even" a  borderline-sociopath would be awash with guilt over having supported this war and would be eager to distract attention away from that -- by belittling the importance of the documents and focusing instead on the messenger:  Julian Assange.  In other words, there's only one category of people who would not feel such guilt -- an absolute sociopath -- and I was generously assuming that Burns was not in that category, which is why I would expect (and hope) that he is driven by guilt over the war he supported.  That's the most generous explanation I can think of for why -- in the face of these startling, historic revelations -- his journalistic choice was to pass on personality chatter about Assange.

UPDATE:  The New York Times offered a feature today -- "Ask The New York Times" -- where readers can ask questions of the various reporters who worked on the WikiLeaks story.  The first two questions were about the criticisms I've voiced about that coverage over the last few days (or at least the first question was:  about my critique of the substance of the NYT's coverage); the second question was merely a general one about the reasons why the NYT published the "hit piece" on Julian Assange, and Burns answered and took that opportunity to "address" my criticisms specifically.
I don't have much to add to what either reporter said there, as I think my critiques stand on their own, and I've already addressed most of the excuses offered.  I will, however, note two points:  (1) one the cheapest, most slothful and most intellectually dishonest methods for refuting an argument is to mockingly slap the label of "conspiracy theory" on it, as though the argument then becomes self-refuting; that's virtually always a non-responsive strawman, and that's exactly what Burns does in purporting to address my criticisms even though, manifestly, nothing I said qualifies as such; and (2) it's a very significant -- and positive -- change even from a couple of years ago that these reporters are not only loudly exposed to criticisms of their work, but feel compelled to expend substantial efforts engaging them and responding.
As for John Burns' overarching mentality, consider what he said on PBS' News Hour in July, after Gen. McChrystal had been fired, about the lesson that should be learned from that episode:  "I think we in the press have to really look at cases like this and say, to what extent can we change the way we behave in such a way that this sort of thing doesn't happen again?"  If an Important and Great Man like Gen. McChrystal ends up negatively affected as a result of truths uncovered by a real journalist (Michael Hastings), then -- sayeth John Burns -- the media must change its behavior, for that is the opposite of what it ought to be doing.

UPDATE II:  I was just on a radio program with the long-time journalist and media critic Norman Solomon, who said:  "I was in Baghdad before the invasion and spoke with Burns, and he was seriously eager to have this invasion take place.  And throughout the war, he constantly denounced the behavior of Iraqi insurgents without ever applying the same human rights standards to the American forces in Iraq." 
Despite all that, Burns (of course) will be the first to insist that he's a "neutral journalist," because to American establishment journalists, "neutrality" means: "serving the interests of American political and military leaders and amplifying their perspective."  Think about it, though:  if you were John Burns and had this unrepentant pro-war record (or if you were the NYT and were saddled with its war-enabling history), wouldn't you also be eager -- in the face of these WikiLeaks revelations -- to urge everyone to look over there at Julian Assange's personality traits, or what Iran was doing in Iraq, or anything else you could think of to distract from the extraordinary human suffering and mass death you helped unleash?

UPDATE III:  The Columbia Journalism Review slams the NYT's WikiLeaks coverage for being "tame to a fault," "afraid," and "a bit of a whitewash." 

• More Glenn Greenwald

  

A police boat patrols the river Thames near the MI6 headquarters in London. The head of M16 is to speak publicly about its work. Photograph: Lennart Preiss/AP

The chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, will step out of the shadows today to make an unprecedented public intervention.

Sir John Sawers is the first serving MI6 chief – known in Whitehall simply as C – to deliver a public speech in the organisation's 100-year history.

His address, to a meeting of the Society of Editors, follows a first public speech by Iain Lobban, director of the electronic eavesdropping agency GCHQ, who spoke about the threat of cyber warfare.

Jonathan Evans, the director general of the Security Service, has also publicly spoken in recent weeks about the continuing terrorist threat from al-Qaida related groups and dissident Irish republicans.

Unlike many of his predecessors, Sawers came to the job with a significant public profile, having held a number of prominent diplomatic posts, including ambassador to the United Nations.

Since taking up his post a year ago, he has appeared twice in public to give evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war relating to earlier postings as foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair and UK envoy to Baghdad.

His decision to speak publicly about the work of MI6 was welcomed by Bob Satchwell, executive director of the Society of Editors.

"Wherever possible the public should be told what is being done in their name," he said. "The default switch should be set to release information unless there is an extremely good reason for withholding it.".

"We are glad to provide a platform that will encourage greater openness which will help to build confidence and respect for our intelligence services in their vital work in protecting national security."
( from guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 October 2010 )

'Ball in Venice', November 1951, photographed by Cecil Beaton

'The Paris Mode, as New York Likes It', May 1927, photographed by Edward Steichen

'Madame Lucien Lelong', September 1931, photographed by George Hoyningen-Huene

'Draped Skirt and Tunic', September 1934, photographed by George Hoyningen-Huene

'Elegance', January 1950, photographed by Cecil Beaton

‘Gloria Swanson, New York 1924’ by Edward Steichen, sold for $540,000 in 2007

"When Edward Steichen, a painter and pioneer of artistic photography, was hired as chief photographer of Condé Nast magazines and started work on its flagship titles Vogue and Vanity Fair in 1922, he crossed a border. Burning all his canvases, he declared: “Art for art’s sake is dead, if it ever lived.”

At Vanity Fair, Steichen took some of the most memorable – and valuable – celebrity photos in history. His shadowy portraits of Noël Coward, George Gershwin and Gary Cooper are highly sought-after, and a silver gelatin print of his 1924 shot of the lace-covered face of Gloria Swanson, the silent film star, was auctioned for $540,000 by Phillips de Pury in New York in 2007.

His artistic reputation suffered from his defection to the world of commercial photography. “People thought it was unforgivable to work at a magazine, although I don’t think he cared,” says Anne Kennedy, co-founder of Art + Commerce, a New York agency that used to represent Leibovitz and has fashion photographers including Patrick Demarchelier and Steven Meisel on its books.

Steichen was eventually forgiven, though, and became director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1947. The example he set, of moving between magazine and art photography, was later followed by others including Irving Penn, who worked for Vogue, and Diane Arbus, who worked for Harper’s Bazaar."(John Gapper)

    This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
    He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
    Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
    And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
    He that shall live this day, and see old age,
    Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
    And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
    Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
    And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
    Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
    But he'll remember, with advantages,
    What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
    Familiar in his mouth as household words-
    Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
    Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
    Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
    This story shall the good man teach his son;
    And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
    From this day to the ending of the world,
    But we in it shall be remembered-
    We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
    For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
    Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
    This day shall gentle his condition;
    And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
    Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
    And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
    That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsRTWPJ7oJI

J'ai entendu parler d'un livre dont le titre est étrange : "The Devil Thumbs a Ride and Other Unforgetabble Movies" de Barry Gifford .
Le commentaire d'un acheteur sur Amazon :
 " Barry Gifford clearly knows and loves his noir. This book is comprised of columns Gifford wrote -- I forget the publication they originally appeared in -- recounting the plots of noir cinema, both from the '50s and from more recent times, in a stripped-down prose any hardboiled novelist would be proud of. These aren't reviews so much as praising bits of imitation -- Gifford seems to be challenging himself to write the perfect synopses of the movies he recounts, with a language that truly captures the feel of the genre. Minimalist meditations on crime films. You won't learn much about the movies Gifford writes about from this book (other than the stories) but if you've seen them and love them, you'll enjoy reading his prose, and if you haven't, you might get motivated to hunt them down. "
___comprise ,vb = To consist of; be composed of / To include; contain
___stripped-down ,adj. = Having only essential or minimal features; lacking anything extra: a stripped-down stage setting; a stripped-down budget.
___hardboiled novelist ; Hardboiled fiction, most commonly associated with detective stories, is distinguished by an unsentimental portrayal of crime, violence, and sex.
___hunt down ,vb. , adv. =  to pursue successfully ;  " by diligent searching and chasing they finally hunted down the killer in Mexico " .

Il existe un film noir qui porte ce titre :The Devil Thumbs a Ride is a 1947 suspense film, considered to be film noir , starringLawrence Tierney.
___thumb ,vb.  = (Informal) To solicit (a ride) from a passing vehicle by signaling with the thumb.

*for vocabulary see the link

preston sturges

Jimmy MacDonald, a twenty-dollar-a-week clerk at the Baxter Coffee Company, refuses to marry his sweetheart, Betty Casey, until he prospers. To realize his dream, Jimmy, an inveterate contest entrant, submits a slogan to the Maxford Coffee Contest: "If you can't sleep at night, it's not the coffee, it's the bunk." ___bunk ,n. = a rough bed (as at a campsite) ___an inveterat contest entrant ; entrant  ,n. =  a person who enters a competition or contest; competitor The winner of the contest is supposed to be announced on Maxford's radio program, but when Bildocker, one of the jury contest members, deadlocks the vote by refusing to go along with the slogan selected by the other twelve members, the program has to end without revealing the winning slogan. ___he deadlocks the vote by refusing... ; deadlock ,n. = a state of affairs in which further action between two opposing forces is impossible; stalemate /  a tie between opposite sides in a contest The next day, three of Jimmy's friends, Tom, Dick and Harry, decide to play a practical joke on him by making up a phony telegram informing him that he has won the $25,000 first prize. When the telegram is delivered to Jimmy's desk at work, Jimmy, Betty and the entire office start to celebrate, and before his friends can tell him that the telegram is just a prank, Jimmy telephones his mother with the good news. ___to play a practical joke on him by ... ___phony ,adj. =  False; spurious: a phony name. /  Not honest or truthful; deceptive: a phony excuse. ___prank , n. = A mischievous trick or practical joke.  Mr. Baxter, thinking that Jimmy's ideas must be good, promotes him to the advertising department. Because the telegram has instructed Jimmy to go to the Maxford company to pick up his prize, Jimmy and Betty innocently go to the office of Dr. Maxford, the head of the company. Because Maxford is frustrated and angry that no winner was selected in time for the broadcast and can't reach any of the contest jurors by telephone, he thinks that Jimmy's slogan was selected as the winner and signs the first prize check. Jimmy then goes to a department store where he uses the check as collateral to buy Betty an engagement ring, his mother a fancy new "Devanola" couch and gifts for everyone on their block. ___he uses the check as a collateral ; collateral,n. =  Property acceptable as security for a loan or other obligation.  Jimmy and Betty think that their troubles are at an end, as the entire neighborhood celebrates their good fortune, but meanwhile, Maxford discovers his mistake and stops payment on the check. Everyone's "Christmas in July" celebration is interrupted when representatives from the department store arrive to reclaim their merchandise and Maxford appears, tears up his check and denounces Jimmy. The department store decides to let the neighbors keep their gifts and blames everything on Maxford and a near riot erupts. As Jimmy is comforted by Betty, Tom, Dick and Harry arrive, carrying a broken-down couch for Jimmy's mother, which they remorsefully offer as an apology for the prank. ___he stops payment on the check ___he blames everything on Maxford ___broken-down ,adj. =  not in working order "a broken-down tractor" ___remorsefully  Jimmy's downfall appears complete when he goes back to Baxter's to see the new office which has been prepared for him and Baxter threatens to demote him, but Betty convinces him to give Jimmy a chance. ___demote ,vb. = To reduce in grade, rank, or status.  As they go home, Jimmy admits that he only had confidence in himself because he won the contest and does not know if he can do a good job in the ad department. Just at that moment, however, Bildocker rushes into Maxford's office and announces that he finally has convinced the rest of the contest jury to admit that his favorite slogan should be the winner. Bildocker then reads the winning entry: "If you can't sleep at night, it's not the coffee, it's the bunk." As Maxford screams, Bildocker expresses his admiration for the slogan and says that they just sent a telegram to the winner, Jimmy MacDonald. *for vocabulary see the  link

Trouvé cet article sur Lina Basquette
From the Daily Telegraph , 13th October 1994 :
Lina Basquette , who has died at Wheeling , West Virginia , aged 87 , was a silent movie star with a noisy private life.
In 1929 Adolf Hitler wrote her a fan letter in which he declared that she is his favourite American movie star. Eight years later , when the Fuhrer ruled the Third Reich , he invited her to Berchtesgaden , where he urgently pressed his attentions."The man repelled me so much ," she recounted , "He had terrible body odour; he was flatulent. But he had a sweet smile , and above all he had these strange , penetrating eyes." Not penetrating enough, though , for Basquette , who related that she was obliged to curb his enthusiasm by kicking him in the groin.When that failed to deter his advances she told him that she was partly Jewish .
  She was born Lena Baskette at San Mateo, California , in 1907. Her mother determined to push her into show business , so that the girl was only eight when she starred as a baby ballerina on the Victor Talking Machine stand at the San Francisco World Fair. Shortly afterwards her father , liberally plied with dirnk by the Hollywood mogul Carl Laemmle Snr., signed a contract under which Lena was bound to Universal for six years , at $50 a week. She starres in the Lena Baskette Featurettes , and appeared as a child in longer films such as Shoes (1916) and Penrod(1922).Meanwhile her father had commited suicide , a tragedy for which Lena was inclined to blame her mother 's greed for money. But she liked her new stepfather , Ernest Belcher , while her new half-sister would become famous as the dancer and choreographer Marge Champion.
Lena 's own dancing had been admired by Anna Pavlova , and in 1923 she left films and became leading dancer for the Ziegfeld Follies. It was at this time that she changed her name to Lina Basquette . "Lena is a cook", a producer explained , "Lina is an artiste." Il 1925 she married Sam Warner , one of the Warner Bros. , who had admired her on Broadway in Louie the 14th. She would later claim to have encouraged his interest in "talkies" , and to have urged him to engage Al Jolson for the first sound feature. Sam Warner died the day before the premiere of The Jazz Singer (1927) , and Basquette embarked on a prolonged and expensive campaign against the Warner family to secure both her inheritance and the custody of her daughter. Her failure led in 1930 to a well-publicised suicide attempt. Meanwhile her sultry good looks had once more graced the screen , in Ranger of the North(1927), Serenade (1927) , The Noose (1928) , Wheel of Chance (1928) , Celebrity  (1928) , Show Folks (1928) , The Younger Generation (1929) and Come Across (1929) . Her own favourite part was in The Godless Girl (1929) , Cecil B. DeMille's last silent film ; she played a high-school drop-out who was sent to jail.
Basquette 's work in Hollywood did not interrupt her matrimonial carrer . Her husbands included Peverell marley , a cameraman on The Godless Girl  , and the boxer Jack Dempsey's trainer . This led to a torured entanglement with Dempsey himself , and another suicide attempt.
By now Basquette was appearing only in minor films , such as Hard Hombre (1931) , Morals for Women (1931) , and The Final Hour (1936) . Shortly before the Second World War she toured the world in various plays , and in 1943 made her last film , A Night for Crime.
In the same year she brought charges of rape and assault against a 22- year old soldier , who was sent to prison for 20 years.
She was now having an affair with a Japanese man ; later she dropped hints that she had been invloved in espionage and claimed to have had advance knowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbour.
After the Second World War she settled down on an estate in Bucks County , Pennsylvania , where she bred champion Great Danes and wrote several books on the subject. She also published an autobiography , Lina : De Mill's Godless Girl (1991) .
Estimates as to number of Basquette's marriages vary from six to nine. She had a son and daughter.

L'autre jour  j'ai vu The Quiet American sur TCM . Je copie cet article du site tcm.com
 Overview Article:

When an American working for an aid organization in Vietnam is murdered, Vigot, a French police inspector, must investigate the case. The story, told through flashbacks, concerns an American who arrives in Indochina (Vietnam) under the auspices of an economic aid organization to support the "third force" in the struggle against the French Colonists and the Communists. There he meets Fowler, a world-weary British journalist, and falls in love with Fowler's mistress Phuong. In retaliation, Fowler accuses the American of using economic aid as a cover for a scheme to sell arms to anti-Communist forces, making the American a target for the Communists. Eventually, Fowler learns of the American's innocence through Inspector Vigot.
___the story , told through flashbacks , ...
___ world-weary, adj. = Tired of the world; bored with life.
___retaliation , vb. intr. = To return like for like, especially evil for evil ; in retaliation for → en représailles de

The Quiet American (1958) was among the first films to deal with the problem of the American presence in Vietnam (or Indochina, as it was commonly known at that time). The original book by Graham Greene was overtly critical of "Uncle Sam's" presence in Vietnam and caused an uproar in the U.S. when it was published in 1956.
___overtly
___it caused an uproar
 However, this provocative aspect of the story was softened by writer/director/producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz for the adaptation. Among other things, the American was changed from a government official to a private citizen. Casting real-life war hero Audie Murphy as the American also helped make the character more immediately sympathetic to American audiences.
Incidentally, Laurence Olivier, who was originally to play Fowler, dropped out when he learned that Murphy was cast as the American instead of Montgomery Clift; Michael Redgrave took Olivier's place. According to Robert Lantz, before making the film Mankiewicz said, "I will tell the whole story anti-Communist and pro-American." However, Mankiewicz later denied saying this, claiming that he made the changes in the script to show how "emotions can very often dictate political beliefs."
___real-life war hero
___it helped make the character more ....
___he was to play ...
                                                      ****************************************
The novels of Graham Greene (1904-1991) are an unusual combination of globetrotting intrigue, psychological character studies and serious meditations on moral and theological issues.
___globetrotting intrigue ; globetrotting ,vb.intr. =To travel often and widely, especially for sightseeing.  Educated in Oxford, he flirted with Communism briefly before converting to Catholicism in 1926. During the 1930s, he worked for the Secret Intelligence Service and traveled to countries such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, Indochina, Cuba, Haiti and Mexico, thus discovering settings for his travel writings and novels. Greene's works have been widely adapted to film, often with screenplays written by Greene himself: The Power and the Glory, which became John Ford's The Fugitive (1947); The Fallen Idol (1948); The Third Man (1949); The End of the Affair (1955) and Our Man in Havana (1960). The most notable Greene adaptation of recent years is Neil Jordan's reworking of The End of the Affair (1999).
                                                    ********************************************
The film was shot partly on the soundstages of the Cinecitta Studio in Rome, partly in Vietnam. Location shooting in Vietnam was not without complications. Cinematographer Robert Krasker had to avoid shooting at noon because the intense overhead tropical sun created lighting problems. The crew also encountered difficulties obtaining permission to shoot inside a Buddhist temple due to the phase of the moon.
___soundstage ,n. =A room or studio that is usually soundproof, used for the production of movies.
___location shooting in Vietnam was ....
___ the intense overhead tropical sun  ; overhead ,adj. = situated or operating above head height or some other reference level
___he encountered difficulties obtaining ...
According to one source, the film's Vietnam production unit became the unwitting participant in a political demonstration. While filming in the city of Tay Ninh, they witnessed what they believed to be a religious procession by the Cao-Dai sect with about 40,000 participants. However, they later learned that it was a protest by the sect calling for the return of its leader. The police, who assumed that the event had been staged specially for the film, allowed it to proceed without interference.
___unwitting , adj. = Not knowing; unaware
___it was a protest calling for...
___ they allowed it to proceed without interference  ; proceed ,vb. intr. = to undertake and continue (something or to do something)" he proceeded with his reading"

While a number of critics pointed out the film's blunted political message at the time of its release, it was nonetheless praised for its acting, especially Michael Redgrave's brilliant performance as Fowler, and its vivid use of locations. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote, "Scenes shot in Saigon have a vivid documentary quality and, indeed, the whole film has an aroma of genuine friction in the seething Orient."
___blunted , blunt , adj. = Abrupt and often disconcertingly frank in speech: "Onscreen, John Wayne was a blunt talker and straight shooter" . See Synonyms at gruff.

                                          Slow to understand or perceive; dull.

___vivid , adj. = Perceived as bright and distinct; brilliant: a vivid star.

                          Conveying to the mind striking realism, freshness, or trueness to life 

J'ai lu un article concernant un documentaire sur deux cinéastes hongrois ,Vilmos Zsigmond et Laszlo Kovacs .
Szigmond studied cinema at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest.He worked for five years in a Budapest feature film studio becoming "director of photography".
Together with his friend and fellow student László Kovács, he chronicled the events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in Budapest on thirty thousand feet of film and then escaped to Austria shortly afterwards.
___he chronicled the events on thirty thousand feet of film
In 1964 working with a favorite crew which included László Kovács, Jim Enochs, and Ernie Reed, Vilmos shot the European style, neo-noir, black and white film "Summer Children" (aka a Hot Summer Game)which has recently been fully restored digitally for DVD release.
He gained prominence during the 1970s working on Robert Altman's" McCabe & Mrs. Miller" and" The Long Goodbye" ...

On peut lire davantage sur sa maniere de filmer dans un livre d'interviews avec différents cineastes : Masters of Light: Conversations with Contemporary Cinematographers. University of California Press.
                                         
                                                                  **************************
Je devrais peut-etre voir ce film , l'intrigue est inhabituelle pour un western .
 "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" ,  a 1971 Western motion picture starring Warren Beatty, directed by Robert Altman.
One of Altman's typically naturalist films, the director called McCabe an "anti-western film" because the film ignores or subverts a number of Western conventions.

The plot :                    
Around the beginning of the twentieth century, a gambler named John McCabe arrives in the fictional town of Presbyterian Church, Washington to open a low-class brothel.
McCabe quickly takes a dominant position over the town's simple-minded and lethargic miners, thanks to his aggressive personality and rumors that he is a gunfighter. The "legend" of McCabe is propagated largely through gossip on the part of Paddy Sheehan, a local saloon owner notorious for telling tales.
___take a dominant position over the town's miners
___simple-minded
___story propagated through gossip on the part of...
The rumor is that McCabe shot a famous gunfighter named Bill Roundtree with a Derringer pistol during a card game. The legend is neither confirmed nor encouraged by McCabe; he is not seen with such a pistol until the film's conclusion, and is not portrayed as a courageous type, leading the audience to believe that the legend is merely a fabrication.
McCabe establishes his make-shift brothel, consisting of three prostitutes purchased from a pimp in the nearby town of Bearpaw for $200.
___make-shift = a temporary or expedient substitute for something else.
___pimp = One who finds customers for a prostitute; a procurer.
Constance Miller, an opium-addicted professional "madam," arrives in Presbyterian Church. She convinces him that she can do a better job of managing the brothel than he can, as McCabe is clearly inept when dealing with women.
The two become successful business partners, and a love interest develops between these two
frontier-hardened and cynical characters.
___he is inept when dealing with women
___fronteir - hardened
As Presbyterian Church becomes a richer and more successful community, a pair of agents from the Harrison Shaughnessy mining company arrive to buy out McCabe's business as well as the surrounding zinc mines. Harrison Shaughnessy is notorious for having people killed when they refuse to sell.
McCabe doesn't want to sell at their initial price, but he overplays his hand in the negotiations in spite of Mrs. Miller's warnings that he is underestimating the violence that will ensue if they don't take the money and run.
___he overplays his hand
___overplay =  overestimate the strength of (one's holding or position) with resulting defeat: overplayed his hand and lost the game.
Three bounty killers are dispatched by the mining company to make an example of McCabe.
___bounty =  a reward, inducement, or payment, especially one given by a government for acts deemed beneficial to the state, such as killing predatory animals, growing certain crops, starting certain industries, or enlisting for military service.
 The climactic showdown between McCabe and his hunters is unconventional for a Western.
___showdown =  An event, especially a confrontation, that forces an issue to a conclusion.
 McCabe is clearly afraid of the gunmen when they arrive in town. He initially tries to appease them. Finally, when a lethal confrontation becomes inevitable, he manages to kill two of the gunslingers by shooting them in the back from hidden positions, leaving only the most fearsome of the three to deal with.
As a final twist of the plot, McCabe shoots the third bounty killer with a Derringer pistol, confirming that the original gunfighter legend might well have been true. McCabe, however, does not survive.
___twist of the plot

* for vocabulary  see the link

Lancaster a été le troisième mari de la journaliste Ann Scott-James. J'ai trouvé sur internet cet article qui est un résumé d'une biographie écrite par Richard Boston , "A Portait of Osbert Lancaster".

Osbert Lancaster was born in 1908, near the end of the Edwardian era, and carried throughout his life the memory of those final, happy days before Europe’s first Armageddon. He was the last of the last of the Edwardians. (His first name, Osbert, is a derivation of Albert, the Christian name of Edward VII.) The young Osbert was an unwilling schoolboy at Charterhouse, where the headmaster’s final report praised him as “irretrievably gauche” and “a sad disappointment.” For Osbert the feeling was mutual: He was already drawing at this time — the officials at Charterhouse coming in for many an illustrated drubbing — and already in the active style full of movement that would mark his future work.
___Armageddon (de l'hébreu : מגידו, signifiant « colline de Megiddo », un petit mont en Israel), terme biblique  mentionné dans le Nouveau Tastament , est un lieu symbolique du combat final entre le Bien et le Mal .

___irretrievable , adj =  Difficult or impossible to retrieve or recover ;

___irretrivably ,adv. =  irréparablement.

___drubbing ,n. = a beating, as with a stick, cudgel ;  the act of inflicting corporal punishment with repeated blows

Osbert’s first move after being admitted to Lincoln College, Oxford, was to grow the distinguished, just-shy-of-Stalinesque mustache that would adorn his upper lip for the rest of his life, and which was quite contrary to the prevailing fashion among the university’s effete young arbiters of taste. His contemporaries at Oxford include a who’s who of 20th-century aesthetes, dandies and literati: Allan Pryce-Jones, Beverly Nichols, Cecil Day-Lewis, Cyril Connolly, Evelyn Waugh, Harold Acton, Randolph Churchill (Winston’s boy, whom Osbert described as “without exception the best-looking man I’ve ever seen”), and Robert Byron.
___just-shy-of- Stalinesque mustache
___mustache that would adorn his upper lip
___prevailing fashion ; prevailing , adj. = Most frequent or common; predominant.
During his college years Osbert primarily ran with the aesthetes as opposed to the games-mad hearties. Yet unlike many of his fellow artistic and literary friends he wasn’t gay. Nor was he attracted, like Waugh and others, to Catholicism. With drawing-room Marxism and other lefty political poses he would have no truck; likewise with the far right. He was uniquely Osbert, and that had already come to mean a balanced mind with a sense of proportion in a modest conservatism.
___games-mad
___hearties , n.pl. = A good fellow; a comrade. hearty , adj. = enthousiaste , chaleureux
___truck  (= dealings) to have no truck with sb = refuser d'avoir affaire à qqn.

                                                     ***************
Osbert’s sartorial style also crystallized during the ‘30s. Like many of the more innovative dandies before him, Osbert’s style was decided not only by what he chose wear but what he cast off. “I wear everything I was not allowed to wear at Charterhouse. We were not allowed jackets with vents, shirts with attached collars, or less than three buttons to a jacket,” he once said. “As soon as I left school, I had all my suits made up with two-button jackets.” He claimed to have set the fashion for attached collars and pink shirts. “My shirtmaker was appalled,” he remembered. And he discarded vests — he said that central heating had made them unnecessary — and the boots that his mother insisted “were so good for my ankles”

He was not above a bit of sartorial daring now and then and claimed to be among the first to wear white dinner jackets. It’s probable that Noel Coward was really among the first, but Osbert was no doubt the first among his set and class, which is what counts.

Osbert may have been a shade more casual a dandy than his predecessors — which is also, of course, very like many of his dandy predecessors. But he insisted on certain standards, such as dinner jackets for evening, saying, “I can’t see the point of saying ‘don’t dress, just put on a dark suit.’ If you are going to change, you might as well do it properly.”

Despite the depression, the mid-1930s were good times for the Lancasters, all the way up until the time the Germans invaded Poland.

***

Osbert wasn’t exactly the military type, but he managed to do his part and with considerable aplomb. He joined the Diplomatic Service and was sent to the British Embassy in Athens after British and Greek forces forced the Nazis out, only to be caught in the middle of one of the least pleasant civil wars of the 20th century. Here he worked with Harold Macmillan, among other notables. Caught between the various trigger-happy factions, the embassy was all but used by snipers for target practice. The ricochet of bullets served as accompaniment to each day’s dissonant aria of diplomacy.

After the war, Osbert returned to London and settled into that pattern of life that would continue to make him such a quiet social, creative and commercial success. He continued creating his pocket cartoons, writing and illustrating his own books and illustrating those of his friends. In addition he gave lectures, went often to his tailor (Thresher & Glenny), appeared occasionally on BBC television, traveled to Italy (to see Max Beerbohm), as well as other places, painted murals for commercial buildings, designed costumes and sets for opera, ballet and theatre, and of course kept up with the gossip at his clubs and rarely turned down an invitation to a party. He was knighted in 1975, the only cartoonist ever to be thus honored. He died in 1986, aged 77.

(extrait de l'article paru dans  www.dandyism.net/?p=307 )

Le Tombeau des Rois est le nom donné à des tombes datant de l'époque du Second Temple. Il se trouve à Jérusalem dans la rue Saladin, à 700 mètres au nord des remparts de la Vieille ville.

Aujourd'hui, les historiens proposent l'hypothèse que le tombeau était destiné à la famille d'Hélène, reine d'Adiabène, un royaume situé entre l'Assyrie et l'Arménie dont les souverains s'étaient convertis au judaïsme. L'origine de cette identification vient de Flavius Josèphe qui parle du tombeau que Monobaz avait commandé pour sa mère Hélène.

Revenue en Adiabène, elle [Hélène] ne survécut guère à son fils lzatès. Monobaze envoya ses os et ceux de son frère à Jérusalem et les fit ensevelir dans les trois pyramides que sa mère avait fait construire à trois stades de la ville. Antiquités juives (XX, 5, 4)

Dans la Guerre des juifs contre les romains (V,2,2), on apprend que le monument d'Hélène était au nord de Jérusalem, ce qui correspond à l'emplacement du tombeau des Rois.

Jérusalem : tombeau des rois de Juda : intérieur de la cour (1856)

Une légende ancienne prétendant que le tombeau abritait un trésor, le gouverneur ottoman de Jérusalem entreprit des fouilles en 1847 qui ne donnèrent rien mais qui endommagèrent beaucoup le site.

Au XIX^e siècle des sondages et des fouilles ont été réalisés par des archéologues français qui ont d'abord identifié le site au tombeau des rois de la lignée de David. Une campagne de fouilles eut lieu en 1863 sous la conduite de Ferdinand de Saulcy. Il permit de découvrir un sarcophage portant l'inscription צדה מלכתה ("Sadah reine"). Le sarcophage fut transféré au musée du Louvre.
Une autre campagne de fouilles eut lieu en 1867 sous la direction de Charles Clermont-Ganneau.
A la fin du XIX^e siècle, le site fut l'objet de dévotions de la part des juifs de Jérusalem, pendant les fêtes de Pessah et deHanoucca.
En 1878, le site fut acheté par les frères Pereire afin de le donner au gouvernement français pour le conserver à la science et à la vénération des fidèles enfants d'Israël. Du fait de la législation ottomane qui ne connait pas la personne morale, le site ne fut pas donné à la France, mais directement au consul de France à Jérusalem.

 Auguste Salzmann French, 1824-1872 Born into a family of painters in Ribeauvillé, Haut-Rhin in Alsace, Auguste Salzmann exhibited his canvases of landscapes in the Paris Salons of 1847, 1848, and 1850.
This artistic background, along with his distinctive subject matter, contributed to Salzmann's photographic style. His photographs were exhibited only once during his lifetime, at the 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris.

Primarily interested in archaeology, he belonged to no photographic societies and considered his photographic work merely a tool.

Auguste Salzmann: Jerusalem, Tombeau du Rois de Juda: Fragments d'un sarcophage. 1854, Blanquart-Evrard salt print from waxed paper negative, 9-1/4 x 13-1/4 in. (236 x 337 mm), on original lithographed mount. t1118j.

  Salzmann visited Palestine (1850-51) and Jerusalem (1853), combining a project to record the monuments left by the Crusaders with another that tried to prove the work of scholar Louis-Félicien-Joseph Caignart deSaulcy, whose controversial historical and architectural theories involved the dating of buildings within the ancient city.
The resulting images were published by Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Évrard in Jérusalem, époques judaique, romaine, chrétienne, arabe, explorations photographique par A. Salzmann (1854).
In these extremely intense studies, light and form were used to animate the ancient buildings and landscape of the Middle East.

Auguste Salzmann: St. Sepulchre. 1854, Blanquart-Evrard salt print from waxed paper negative, 13-1/16 x 9-1/4 in. (333 x 236 mm), on original mount. q1450j.

Auguste Salzmann: Jerusalem: Église de Sainte Marie Madeleine. 1854, Blanquart-Evrard salt print from waxed paper negative, 9-1/4 x 12-7/8 in. (235 x 328 mm), on original lithographed mount. r1093.

A journey to Rhodes (185-67) led to another publication, Nécropole de Camiros, which documented a site Salzmann is believed to have discovered. Although much of the biographical information about Salzmann is unclear and remains a subject of debate, his work continues to be influential and admired.

  Porte de Damas , vue exterieure

Auguste Salzmann: Porte de David, Jerusalem., Blanquart-Evrard salt print from waxed paper negative, 12-7/8 x 9-1/8 in. (328 x 232 mm), on original lithographed mount. z1038.