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MY LAI VET SAYS: HERE IT
COMES AGAIN IN IRAQ
Tony Swindell
recalls "Butcher's Brigade" in '69; says "gooks"
have now become "ragheads", every adult male is an
"insurgent" ... atrocities against Iraqi civilians
are soon going to explode in America's face; US Government's courtroom jihads against terror
stumble. Alexander Cockburn on Lodi case where Feds paid $250,000
to man who "saw" world's three top terrorists at mosque.
As neocons
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Tear
Down the Cathedrals and Replace Them with Ruins
Proposals for Rationally
Improving the City of Paris
By LETTRIST INTERNATIONAL
The Lettrists present at the September
26 meeting jointly proposed the following solutions to the various
urbanistic problems that came up in discussion. They stress that
no constructive action was considered, since they all agreed
that the most urgent task is to clear the ground.
The subways should be opened
at night after the trains have stopped running. The corridors
and platforms should be poorly lit, with dim lights flickering
on and off intermittently.
The rooftops of Paris should
be opened to pedestrian traffic by means of modifications to
fire-escape ladders and construction of bridges where necessary.
Public gardens should remain open at night, unlit. (In a few
cases, a steady dim illumination might be justified on psychogeographical
grounds.)
Street lamps should all be
equipped with switches so that people can adjust the lighting
as they wish.
With regard to churches, four
different solutions were proposed, all of which were considered
defensible until appropriate experimentation can be undertaken,
which should quickly demonstrate which is the best.
G.-E. Debord argued for the
total destruction of religious buildings of all denominations,
leaving no trace and using the sites for other purposes.
Gil J. Wolman proposed that
churches be left standing but stripped of all religious content.
They should be treated as ordinary buildings, and children should
be allowed to play in them.
Michèle Bernstein suggested
that churches be partially demolished, so that the remaining
ruins give no hint of their original function (the Tour Jacques
on Boulevard de Sébastopol being an unintentional example).
The ideal solution would be to raze churches to the ground and
then build ruins in their place. The first method was proposed
purely for reasons of economy.
Lastly, Jacques Fillon favored
the idea of transforming churches into houses of horror
(maintaining their current ambience while accentuating their
terrifying effects).
Everyone agreed that aesthetic
objections should be rejected, that admirers of the portals of
Chartres should be silenced. Beauty, when it is not a promise
of happiness, must be destroyed. And what could be more repugnant
representations of unhappiness than such monuments to everything
in the world that remains to be overcome, to the many aspects
of life that remain inhuman?
Train stations should be left
as they are. Their rather poignant ugliness contributes to the
feeling of transience that makes these buildings mildly attractive.
Gil J. Wolman proposed removing or scrambling all information
regarding departures (destinations, times, etc.) in order to
facilitate dérives. After a lively debate, those
opposing this motion retracted their objections and it was wholeheartedly
approved. It was also agreed that background noise in the stations
should be intensified by broadcasting recordings from many other
stations, as well as from certain harbors.
Cemeteries should be eliminated.
All corpses and related memorials should be totally destroyed,
leaving no ashes and no remains. (It should be noted that these
hideous remnants of an alienated past constitute a subliminal
reactionary propaganda. Is it possible to see a cemetery and
not be reminded of Mauriac, Gide or Edgar Faure?)
Museums should be abolished
and their masterpieces distributed to bars (Philippe de Champaigne's
works in the Arab cafés of rue Xavier-Privas; David's
Sacre in the Tonneau on rue Montagne-Geneviève).
Everyone should have free access
to the prisons. They should be available as tourist destinations,
with no distinction between visitors and inmates. (To spice things
up, monthly lotteries might be held to see which visitor would
win a real prison sentence. This would cater to those imbeciles
who feel an imperative need to undergo uninteresting risks: spelunkers,
for example, and everyone else whose craving for play
is satisfied by such paltry pseudogames.)
Buildings whose ugliness cannot
be put to any good use (such as the Petit or Grand Palais) should
make way for other constructions. Statues that no longer have
any meaning, and whose possible aesthetic refurbishings would
inevitably be condemned by history, should be removed. Their
usefulness could be extended during their final years by changing
the inscriptions on their pedestals, either in a political sense
(The Tiger Called Clemenceau on the Champs Élysées)
or for purposes of disorientation (Dialectical Homage to Fever
and Quinine at the intersection of Boulevard Michel and rue
Comte, or The Great Depths in the cathedral plaza on the
Île de la Cité).
In order to put an end to the
cretinizing influence of current street names, names of city
councilors, heroes of the Resistance, all the Émiles and
Édouards (55 Paris streets), all the Bugeauds and Gallifets,
and in general all obscene names (rue de l'Évangile) should
be obliterated.
In this regard, the appeal
launched in Potlatch #9 for ignoring the word "saint"
in place names is more pertinent than ever.
LETTRIST INTERNATIONAL, October
1955
"Projet d'embellissements
rationnels de la ville de Paris" originally appeared in Potlatch #23 (
October 13, 1955). Translated by Ken Knabb.
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