Parabasis

Today's Must Read

Is most definitely Gus' call for an indie theatre repertory. Gus is one of the smartest and most creative thinkers in independent theatre right now, and this idea is no exception.  Really, go over there and check it out. Here's a taste:

An Indie Theatre Repertory company: the best of indie theatre given a longer life through production in repertory.
Imagine a theatre where in one week you could see productions of Universal Robots, MilkMilkLemondae, Fight Girl Battle World and Infectious Opportunity. Where a production of Pretty Theft in the afternoon could be followed by Artifacts Of Consequence in the evening. Where all of the artists are getting paid an amount worth their initial investment.
The structural model could be like the FringeNYC Encore series in miniature. A 7:00 weekday showtime of one production would allow you a 9:00 performance of another, with three show days on the weekend (similar to our Trilogy production schedule, only a little more so). A production could see anywhere from 3-5 shows a week. As one show in rep was ready to end, a new show would be brought in to keep the rep fresh.
The challenges are obvious: difficult change overs, diminished design elements, and yes, union contracts.

Your thoughts?

Is Qom Illegal?

by Rob Grace

As far as I know, the fierce debate raging about whether Iran's newly revealed in-the-works nuclear facility near Qom is legal is difficult to resolve.  Whereas Obama stated that it "represents a direct challenge to the basic foundation of the nonproliferation regime," and Gordon Brown declared, "The level of deception by the Iranian government, and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the entire international community," Ahmadinejad claimed, "What we did was entirely legal."

It's a complex issue involving numerous legal agreements made over the course of several decades.  It starts with NPT Article IV, which acknowledges "the inalienable right of all Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes..."  To ensure a nuclear program's benign end, NPT Article III requires signatories "to accept safeguards, as set forth in an agreement to be negotiated and concluded with the International Atomic Energy Agency ..."  Iran under the Shah signed the NPT in 1968, ratified it in 1970, and completed a Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA in 1974.  The Safeguards Agreement's Article 42 states that "The time limits for the provision of design information in respect of the new facilities shall be specified in the Subsidiary Arrangements and such information shall be provided as early as possible before nuclear material is introduced into a new facility."

The Subsidiary Arrangements, as far as I know, were not made public, which is perhaps one source of the confusion.  However, according to IAEA reports such as this one, Iran completed a Subsidiary Arrangement with the IAEA in 1976 which requires Iran to submit to the IAEA design information on new nuclear facilities "not later than 180 days before the facility is scheduled to receive nuclear material for the first time."  In 2003, Iran and the IAEA agreed to a modified version of this provision that required Iran to submit design information as soon as the Iranian government decided to construct a new facility.  However, in 2007 Iran informed the IAEA it was reverting back to the 1976 version of the agreement, claiming that Iran was not bound by the revised provision because the Iranian parliament had never ratified it.  Basically, the nature of how Subsidiary Arrangements enter into force determines whether Iran's failure to disclose its nuclear facility near Qom was legal.

As far as I can tell, Iran's Safeguards Agreement does not specify how the Subsidiary Arrangements enter into force.  The process for enacting amendments is made more clear.  Article 25 of Iran's Safeguards Agreement states, "This agreement shall enter into force on the date upon which the Agency receives from the Government of Iran written notification that Iran's statutory and constitutional requirements for entry into force have been met," and Article 24 states, "Amendments to this Agreement shall enter into force in the same conditions as entry into force of the Agreement itself."  In other words,  amendments do not enter into force until they have officially become law in Iran, meaning they need to be ratified by the Iranian parliament (See the Iranian Constitution's Article 77, which states, "International treaties, protocols, contracts, and agreements must be approved by the by the Islamic Consultative Assembly.")  The Safeguards Agreement makes a distinction between amendments and Subsidiary Arrangements, stating in Article 39, "The Subsidiary Arrangements may be extended or changed by agreement between the Government of Iran and the Agency without amendment of the Agreement."  However, the Safeguards Agreement doesn't specify how the Subsidiary Arrangements enter into force.  Given the Iranian Constitution's Article 77, though, it would seem that Subsidiary Arrangements require parliamentary approval. 

However, apparently Iran has not previously acted as if Subsidiary Arrangements require parliamentary approval.  James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace notes:

Iran - like every other state - modifies its Subsidiary Arrangements regularly, without asking for parliamentary ratification.  For example, as the size of its enrichment plant at Natanz has grown, Iran has (reluctantly) agreed to various improvements of the Subsidiary Arrangements, but Iran did not ask the Majlis to ratify them.

This fact is pretty damning to Iran's legal case.  Additionally, discussion about Iran's Safeguards Agreement and the Subsidiary Arrangements is perhaps irrelevant because Iran is bound by several UN Security Council resolutions to ratify the IAEA's Additional Protocol, which would require early notification of facility design information.  Iran has, of course, contested the legality of the IAEA's referral of the matter to the Security Council, claiming that the referral was "in contravention with the provision of the Statute of the IAEA and the NPT."  There is, of course, also a strong case against this claim.

It would be interesting for someone to ask Ahmadinejad, or some other Iranian government official, why he believes the 2003 Subsidiary Arrangement required parliamentary approval while the other Subsidiary Arrangements did not.  Until then, I'm alright supporting the argument of Western leaders that until last Monday, Iran was violating its Subsidiary Arrangement by not notifying the IAEA of its nuclear facility near Qom.

This Pretty Much Says It All III

(h/t)

Two More Brand New Sufjan Tracks Being Tested Out On Tour

what do you think?

Things I Agree With

Let's not forget that Roman Polanski is, actually, you know, a rapist edition.

The Absurdity of Christian Theodicy

Andrew Sullivan is holding an informal symposium on the Problem of Pain aka why does a God defined as "good" and "loving" allow pain and suffering seemingly without order or morality?

One of his readers writes him an e-mail filled with the kind of hogwash that made me an atheist in the first place. And it's a very common one. Here's the first part argument:

Pain – the pain experienced by animals and the ineffable pain experienced by those, e.g., swept away in the Indonesian tsunami and those who loved them – is a product of the laws of the physical universe, specifically the Second Law of Thermodynamics, also called the principle of entropy, which observes that all physical being – our bodies, our cars, our homes, our forests, the entire physical world – is in a continuous process of breaking down and falling apart.

Once you get beyond all the nicey-nice words like "ineffable" and efforts to use scientific words to obfuscate what's going on, this is essentially saying: "Things fall apart, that falling apart hurts".  

What this leaves out entirely is that to Christians (and this e-mailer is a self-identified Catholic) God made the laws of physics and God made it "hurt". If God's all powerful, there's no reason why we need feel pain as a result of the laws of physics. nor is there any reason why the laws of physics have to be as they are.  God chose to make them that way. So this doesn't really get him off the hook for the problem of human suffering.

Next up we get to part two of the argument:

Suffering, the existential consciousness of alienation, on which you are so eloquent, is an extension of human freedom. Those of us, like you, who stand in the faith and view the world (both physical and existential) from the perspective of faith, do not have words to understand why God created the world in the way can has, but we do understand that both the principle of entropy and human free will are gifts of the Creator and that God respects the integrity of Creation.

The God of the Bible is an interventionist God. He "hardens Pharos heart" and condemns the Israelites to additional suffering so that he can exact revenge on the Egyptians. He has Jonah swallowed by a Whale. He communicates directly to his creations and rewards and.or punishes them based on their fidelity to his orders.  He continues to perform miracles and interfere directly in human doings after Jesus' death by, for example, blinding St. Paul and speaking to him.  So we have to ask... why didn't god respect his creation until relatively recently? And again, even if it respecting creation to allow them to do as they want-- and I'm cool with that- there's still no reason why pain and suffering are necessary.

For millennia God has been placed in the dock before the tribunal of human misery. The person of faith lacks the wherewithal to make the case for God but knows that Godself does not need the benefit of human advocates. The Christian (or at least the Catholic Christian, I cannot speak for others) knows that God is not insensitive to human misery and that God, in becoming incarnate in the person Jesus Christ, walked with us in our misery and drank the cup of human misery down to the dregs, as the model and price of a life of utter integrity.

And now we get to the whole Jesus thing.  The Catholic theory behind this story is one I've never understood, because from a narrative perspective it makes no sense.  Adam and Eve disobeyed God, so as a result, he cursed all of humanity forever (how good and loving of him).  A few thousand years later, he decides to redeem the human race. But instead of just doing it-- because, remember, he's all powerful-- he decides to sort-of take human form, or maybe have a son, but it's unclear really but anyway he decides that that son/him is going to have to suffer horribly and die as a sacrificial lamb.  Again, this makes absolutely no sense.  There's no reason why an all powerful being would have to do this. He could just forgive us. And he doesn't put us through anything to get our forgiveness. Instead, he goes through it, or anyway makes his son go through it. Who might be him. I just... don't... get... it. I've tried. I know a lot of Catholics. I've studied this stuff. It just-- from a narrative perspective-- makes no sense.

Now here's the thing-- I don't think human misery disproves the existence of God. I don't.  I don't believe in God for other reasons.  What I think misery disproves is the idea that God is either Good or All-Loving, at least from the perspective of the standards that he himself supposedly gave us.  I'd buy the argument that God is Unknowable or Complex or Multifaceted or even Kinda Scary But Also Kinda Awesome Sometimes.  But this is the thing... the unknowability of God only comes up in these arguments when the other person is in a painted-in-a-corner-type situation. You can't assert simultaneously that God is Good and God is Unknowable. Unless you're also saying that God is only Good by God's Own Standards, not the ones he supposedly gave us. At which point, the conversation is meaningless.

Say It Ain't So, Mead!

Mead Hunter wonders if he' s lost the will to blog because of the dearth of his output of late. I have no doubt that that'll change, but in case he needs some encouragement come back, Mead! Don't go towards the light!

Drew Westen On Race

The author of The Political Brain talks brain science and race in the Huffington Post.  Long, but well worth a look. Here's a taste:

It all depends on what you mean by racism. If you mean that the average American consciously believes we should discriminate against Mexicans because their skin is brown, no, any more than the average American consciously believes a black man is incapable of being President. But does it mean that the average American harbors unconscious biases that render Mexican immigrants less "like us" than English immigrants--and that those biases make it easier for many to wonder whether a black President shares their values, loves his country, or can put his country before "his people"--even though the people who reared him were his white mother and grandparents?

What's been missing from our national discourse on "is it race or isn't it?" is the distinction psychologists and neuroscientists have made for over two decades between conscious and unconscious (often called "explicit vs. implicit") prejudice.

Chuck Norris Wants To Desecrate Our Flag To Make The Founders Proud

No, I'm serious.  Read it here.  I've read a couple of Norris' columns and I honestly don't understand them. To the point that they might as well be in another language or something. i wonder if that's what it's like when Conservatives read Atrios or something. Take this quote... "Of course, patriots know that the 50-star flag truly represents one nation under God and our Founders' republic, but modernists simply don't get it. "

What does the word "modernists" mean in this context?  Does Chuck Norris hate Faulkner?  Does he think James Joyce wouldn't understand the symbolism behind the contemporary American flag?

Also.. isn't the conservative bugaboo post-modernism, not regular ole modernism? 

Or is Chuck Norris just against... modernity?

New Sufjan Stevens

Pretty damn different from Illinoise or Seven Swans, I'd say... but then again, Sufjan said he was getting bored, so there you go...

I actually thing the thing I was the most surprised by was not the electronics but the driving and heavy drum beat. Very un-his-other-stuff. Parts of this song are almost like Menomena.

Yosi Sergent Resigns.

Grr. Ian David Moss, as usual, has a lot of great stuff to say here. 

I would just say, because it comes up in the post, that I know here on Parabasis I've gone back and forth between talking about tactically what some of the considerations are for the White House and talking about my frustrations with this NEA "Scandal".  So let me just make it clear: Although I think I get what some of the considerations are, I find what's going on with the NEA, and the administrations cave-in on it completely frustrating and infuriating. In other words, I don't think we should just feed the NEA to the wolves but, given the lack of organized and concentrated political power by arts funding supporters, I understand why it's being offered up like this. 

 I'd have more to say, but Ian does such great work on this at his blog, really just read what he says.  here's the link again!

The Latest "Czar" Attack

Looks like it'll be against Kevin Jennings, the founder of GLSTN (that's Gay and Lesbian Student Teacher Network to you).  

Pam's House Blend breaks it all down for you. It's a long post.  The attacks on Jennings started this summer, but recently Fox News has hopped on the bandwagon. ThinkProgress does yeoman's work counteracting the lies here.

Kevin Jennings is an American hero, as far as I'm concerned, particularly given the high suicide rate amongst queer teens.  The Right is targeting him because he's gay and they're hoping people's homophobia will lead them to swallow outrageous and unsupportable claims about him and GLSTN in much the same say that they hope latent racism will help in their efforts to make people suspicious of Obama. Disgusting.

President Obama Doesn't Think Race is Involved in the Health Care Reform Debate

As this quip on Letterman makes clear...:

 This is the thing tho... while Obama probably can't agree with Jimmy Carter (and it's not clear he would even if he could) Carter is right.  As a recent study written up in the Washington Post makes clear, racial resentment is a good predictor of where one stands on the Health Care debate in a way that was not true during the Clinton years:

Among whites with above average racial resentment, only 19 percent favored fundamental health care reforms and 57 percent favored the present system. Among those who have below average racial resentment, more than twice as many (45 percent) favored government run health care and less than half as many (25 percent) favored the status quo.

No such relationship between racial attitudes and opinions on health care existed in the mid-1990s during the Clinton effort.

It's also worth noting the racial disparities in the ranks of the uninsured. 

It's also worth noting that the GOP is actively stoking and attempting to take advantage of this racial anxiety. I don't really know what Obama is supposed to do about this, and I understand a reticence to talk straight about race after Obama was pilloried for making the point that it's stupid to arrest a 70 year old man for sassing you in his own home. But still, it's worth noting... great quip from Obama, very funny, classic Barack stuff... but also wrong on the merits.

Theater Renovations in England

Steve Waters, Guardian.co.uk:

So why do I feel so queasy? Perhaps because the eye-catching initiatives of the theatrical "grand projets" of the last decade all too often now resemble the other debris of Blairism. Britain is littered with millennium buildings laying off staff, acts of regeneration that didn't trickle down and iconic buildings too iconic for their inner purpose. And as the big beasts of theatre call down more cash to service their vision, how sustainable is theatrical life beyond their charmed circles?

...But when you hear the word "modernisation", reach for your garlic and crucifix. Keeping a theatre vital involves close attention to scale and history. Haworth Tompkins, the National's architect of choice, is wonderfully aware of this, as the Royal Court and Young Vic testify. There's a platonic essence in any theatre that transcends building and personnel. Decanting that spirit from one environment into another is the delicate task of the architect. Somehow that change has to take place without sacrificing the whiff of shabby gentility, the smell of spilt drinks and fag ends, that embodies the unimproved, dandyish world from which most theatres emerged. Hygienic rationalisation alone all too often turns living stages into dead multiplexes.

I Interview A Playwright: Keith Huff

You can read my interview with A Steady Rain scribe Keith Huff here at TDF's website! Hopefully I'll have one up with Lucy Thurber early next week!

Still Not Ready To Be Post-Racial

Meet Discovery Channel's latest documentary series: 

The show offers unrealistic and simplistic explanations about why killings happen, who the people in the community are and what would make things better. It's time for Oakland, and the rest of America, to dump the myths that have lead to ineffective approaches to safety -- and that means calling out this show that feeds on our worst fears of the poor and of people of color....
...If the show was your sole point of reference, you would get the impression that Oakland's response to crime involves mostly white police kicking down doors, conducting dangerous high-speed chases and stopping AC Transit buses in mostly black Oakland.
Gang Wars: Oakland would have us believe the myth -- as the voiceover in the show says -- that law-abiding citizens have only one hope, which is more and tougher policing. The reality is far more complex -- with the community itself taking a central role in creating peace.

Immigration, Inclusion, Middle Classization

Via Matt Yglesias, we get the following find from the Economist:

There can never be full integration of the migrants “swarming” into Brussels, according to a report by the Royal Belgian Geographical Society—at least among the current generation of adults. The immigrants are too different in their religious beliefs and customs, and their impact is too overwhelming. “When they are sufficiently numerous in a neighbourhood” they open their own hairdressing salons, grocery shops and bakeries, the report notes, not to mention “butcher’s shops where they sell meat from ritually slaughtered animals”. They have large families and cram twice the agreed number of tenants into flats, creating “deplorable” living conditions, annoying landlords and disturbing their neighbours. Perhaps “partial assimilation” may one day be achieved, it concludes, but it will be hard: the newcomers’ religion and language “do not ease any attempts at contact.” 

The report in question? It dates from 1933 and describes the panic caused by Jewish immigrants from Poland, when they moved into Brussels neighbourhoods like Schaerbeek. It was recently unearthed by Anne Morelli, a professor of history of the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Prof Morelli reproduces a long extract from the report in this thoughtful essay for KVS Express, an excellent trilingual journal published by the Royal Flemish Theatre in Brussels.

Yglesias comments, "you see this in the United States, too, as anti-immigration rhetoric tends to very precisely parallel what was said about the un-assimilability of Jews and Catholics before the first world war. There’s even a parallel between the very real problems associated with violent strains of Islamist ideology among European Muslim Communities and the only quite real problem of anarchist violence that was associated with U.S. immigrant communities."  Matt has long talked about how anti-immigration writers (particularly Mark Steyn) have seemingly no faith in the institutions of Western Democracy to handle immigrants from other cultures, despite their long record of doing so.  Our nation wasn't torn apart by Jews, nor was it torn apart by the Irish.

But the other question that remains is... how did previous waves of immigrant groups end up become part of the mainstream in American life?  And what lessons can be drawn there?  The only group I have any real knowledge of on this from are Jews.  According to the book How The Jews Became White Folks, the answer to the first question is "The GI Bill". The GI Bill made it possible for Jews to buy homes, go to college and enter the middle class.  I'd add in there two other phenomena: Jews serving alongside Gentiles in WWII and the shock to our nation's conscience of the Holocaust. And it's worth noting-- as most Jews who have been in situations where they're the only Jew in the room can attest-- this integration is far from complete. And it was far from smooth. When my parents were dating (which was in the late 60s) there were still housing codes in Richmond, Virginia.  My mom couldn't live in my dad's neighborhood, and my mom's rabbi had to be given very detailed directions on which house to go to when he came to visit my dad. In some ways, the very integrated nature of my family (my two older siblings are both black) probably has its roots in this experience.

Anyway, the question is... how do we open those doors to immigrants that were opened to Jews via the GI Bill? If you were to literally just dump the same benefits on immigrants now, it'd be a major scandal (And you could argue there's some perverse incentives at work). But still, it's a question... excluding immigrants from society is bad both for them and for our society.  However, actual real inclusion is very expensive to create.

A Potential HIV Vaccine

News reports are in that an HIV vaccine has been tested in Thailand and found effective but not effective enough. In order to show a "clear benefit", a vaccine has to prevent the illness in more than 50% of cases.  In the HIV vaccine's case, the vaccine was effective 31% of the time.

This is a big deal because in the past, vaccines have been 0% effective. In fact, the search for an HIV vaccine has been seen by some (most notably Andrew Sullivan) as a highly expensive multi-decade canard.  That it's borne some fruit is a good sign. Of course, it'll probably take a long time (and a lot of money) to cross the clear benefit line.  

AP story here. I guess this might sound weird, but my first thought was what would American Theatre be like if 31% of the theatre artists and professionals who died of AIDS... didn't?

MilkMilkLemonade Is Sold Out

I've received word that the entire weekend of MML is sold out. If you really want to see the show, your options are...

 (1) Coming to the theater at 7:30 and getting on the wait list (usually a few advance sales don't show up, so the first few people on the wait list will probably get in).  Even if you end up too far down on the list, you're near Hummus Place, Crif Dogs and Dumpling Man!

(2) Finding us a theater to extend the show in. Yes, we'd like to give the show more life.  The problem? None of the three Horse Trade spaces have available space for us.  So... if you have any leads... let us know! parabasisnyc at gmail dot com.

Only Three More Shows Left For MilkMilkLemonade

"Joshua Conkel's brilliant new play MilkMilkLemonade is the hilariously absurd and moving tale of a young boy growing up Gay and artistic in a world that values neither...The whole cast is great: Beckwith presents her Lady in a Leotard as a amusingly timid children's theatre performer- and then takes on other roles as needed, including translating Linda's clucking into human speech and playing a rapacious spider. Creighton (of the Internet sensation "Jack in the Box") is a hoot as Nanna. Jennifer Harder is glamorous and fun as the doomed Linda. Jess Barbagallo and Andy Phelan both give phenomenal performances as Elliot and Emory- they find the truth of their perfectly-observed characters with pinpoint accuracy. Isaac Butler's direction is near-faultless, keeping the crazy and wild happenings grounded and meaningful....A must see"

-- Duncan Pflaster, Broadwayworld.com

Ticket can be bought here. See you at the show!