Word: crypto
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...midst of all this sound, fury and fund raising, Geldof has been dubbed "St. Bob" by the press. He has been denounced by Britain's splenetic right-wing Member of Parliament, Enoch Powell, as a "crypto-imperialist" and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Certainly Geldof s lively penchant for the vernacular would make for a salty acceptance speech in Oslo, but any wishful, wistful speculation about the award's being grabbed by a rocker should not steer clear of the main point. Rock music, the most formidable force in Western popular culture, found a focus...
...Maybe this year's Zeitgeist movie will be another Van Sant crypto-history, Last Days, with Michael Pitt as a doomed rock star in the mold of Kurt Cobain. A few days ago we heard an unsolicited rave on the film from Christopher Doyle, the Australian cinematographer and poet, who thinks Van Sant is one of the few directors today pushing toward a cinema of tomorrow. That recommendation would be enough to have us queueing for the film, if it weren't our job to see it and a hundred other "unmissables...
...allies in the Middle East would fare much better than Iraq's Allawi in genuinely democratic elections. But allowing Arab electorates the right to choose their own leaders is still healthier in the long run. The burden of governing is almost always a moderating experience. (Just ask Turkey's crypto-Islamist government, or the leftist administration of President Lula in Brazil.) The alternative, to promise democracy but curtail it when we don't like the outcome, may be even more dangerous...
...Farrell, who looks overwhelmed and diminished by the burden of carrying an epic movie on his bulked-up shoulders. Jolie, however, is right at home as his mother. A sorceress lolling among snakes--the sexiest Gorgon, whose stare melts the screen--she spits out seductive invectives in a crypto-Carpathian accent; Olympias may be Philip's wife, but she is Dracula's daughter. And Jolie inhabits her with an awful grandeur. The archetypal housewife furious at her husband's philandering, she tells Philip, "In my womb I carried my avenger." Jolie's real vengeance is to invade the film...
...response, IGC members are calling for a greater role for their own party-political militia in providing security. That's an option the U.S. has avoided embracing for fear of entrenching warlordism. But its reliance on Kurdish militia forces in the fight for Fallujah - and now on a crypto-Baathist one to keep the peace there - suggests there may be a piecemeal move to embrace existing, politically-aligned forces as an important component of Iraqi security...