pptechnochief

The Battleship Potemkin: Dialectical materialism or the Marxist interpretation of class conflict.

GAITHER STEWART, IN PREPARATION No Responses »

Feb 112016

=By= Gaither Stewart

This is an excerpt from Gaither Stewart’s novel, Lily Pad Roll, (Punto Press, 2012), as recorded in the great Russian city of Odessa by the fictional German journalist, Karl Heinz Leonhard.

ODESSA

A light spring breeze from the Sea lifts Antonia’s pink chiffon foulard and lets it first flutter for an instant and then fall gracefully over her shoulder. A frisson of excitement rises in me from my visions formed by remembered film frames from Eizenstein’s great film. As we approach, I don’t permit myself to be tempted by partial views or mere glimpses of the historic scene. I walk with my eyes nearly closed, without so much as turning my head. I want the full impact from film and history, all at once. Then, I open my eyes, and there it is.

Antonio Gramsci – Italian Professional Revolutionary

GAITHER STEWART, HISTORY, Revolution No Responses »

Feb 052016

=By= Gaither Stewart

“Telling the truth is always revolutionary.”

Today I visited the tomb of Antonio Gramsci in the Poets’ Cemetery in Rome, a final resting place for artists, poets, writers and illustrious foreigners and lovers of Italy. January 22 is the birthday of the Italian professional revolutionary and founder of the Italian Communist Party in 1921. An inconspicuous urn resting in the center of the mound contains the ashes of the philosopher and Marxist thinker. The tombstone bears only his name and his dates—1891-1937. Fresh red flowers indicate that the site is regularly tended.

Murder in the Cathedral: A Study of Power Relations

GAITHER STEWART, Political Philosophy No Responses »

Jan 312016

The Holy See

=By= Gaither Stewart

The worldwide influence of the Roman Catholic Church emanates from the Holy See,which is the Church’s central government headed by the Pope and physically located within the territory of the Vatican State inside the city of Rome with a population of 821. The Holy See has diplomatic relations with world nations which maintain two separate embassies in Rome: one to Italy and one to the Holy See. Now why the hell, one wonders, should Argentina or the USA, China or Gabon maintain diplomatic relations with a church? Likewise the Holy See has its embassies around the world, the nunciatures, while from day to day the Roman Church insists on meddling in Italy’s and world affairs. Today the Roman Catholic is effectively blocking new legislationon on same sex marriages and concommitant rights in Italy and other countries. One of the first demonstrative acts of each new pope is a triumphant cortege through the streets of “Italy”, just across the Tiber River from the Vatican.

OWL IN THE WATER PIT

GAITHER STEWART, SHORT STORIES No Responses »

Jan 292016

=By= Gaither Stewart

Martin was one of those persons to whom unusual things often happened. It was unclear whether he attracted the odd events or if the events attracted him. What is more, Martin implicated others in the things happening to him so that the singular occurrences of his life became a kind of complicity with other people. Wherever he went, whatever he did, people and objects and nature had a way of going haywire.

“Not By Bread Alone”: Concerning Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor

Exploration, PHILOSOPHY No Responses »

Jan 252016

One of a series of proposed images of Dostoevsky and of his works for a new Moscow metro station, postponed because of fears they could cause suicides.

=By= Gaither Stewart

In the first line of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky’s famous “poem”, often referred to as “the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor”, Ivan Karamazov says to his brother Alyosha that a preface is necessary to the unwritten story he is about to relate. Then in the third line of chapter V in Part Two of THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, Ivan asks rhetorically “For what kind of a writer am I?”, implying that although he, Ivan, is not even an artist, his creator, the author of the written book, Fyodor Dostoevsky, is the greatest of all.

Possibility—Probability of Nuking Russia

GAITHER STEWART, Political Philosophy 1 Response »

Jan 242016

=By= Gaither Stewart

By pure chance the two events occurred simultaneously: On a summer morning I read a reference to Aristotle’s discussion of possibility and probability in Meyer H. Abrams’ book, The Mirror and the Lamp, (in 1998 labeled by Modern Library one of the one hundred greatest English-language non-fiction books of the twentieth century). On the same day, I read several press articles concerning the demands of neocon madmen in the U.S. to “pull the trigger” on Russia, Iran and/or Syria