QUICK BITS no.11

Adam Curtis posts (November) in ARTFORM HERE

https://www.artforum.com/film/id=64424

“What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”

“It starts with Kissinger. His “constructive ambiguity” in Damascus scrambles the diplomatic process and inspires the widespread deployment of suicide bombers (funded by Assad) who, since they can’t assuage their sense of political despair, resort to blowing it up. Meanwhile, in New York City, a penniless municipal government is held hostage by the banks. So we see the twin curses of our age: the cruelties of austerity and the reversion to a nonpolitical politics, in which diplomacy is discarded and the public dismissed. This is the fake world: one where the mass sentiments of the Middle East can be skirted by Kissinger’s tricky wording, a world where a fickle Invisible Hand is either patting you on the head or giving you the middle finger.”