tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-122998912024-03-19T05:50:48.996-04:00JAVA STUDIOS - Media That Matters and Community DevelopmentPresenting media for community development in arts awareness, political dialogue, economic issues and cultural impact. Establishing a Cultural Commons.javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.comBlogger300125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-797953664565371742010-01-02T15:24:00.004-05:002010-04-22T14:57:49.265-04:00The Real Top Ten Stories of the Past Decade<h1 class="title"><span style="font-weight: normal;font-size:85%;" >Oh, yes. A New Year. New Decade.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> And I'm resuming my (oh, so interesting and important !) postings. In the summer of '08, I rather inexplicably curtailed the level of blogging I had been doing in the past couple years. I simply became more engaged in other activities, and, despite the ensuing Presidential Elections underway, chose to withdraw from commentary, and attempt in the process to gain a broader perspective on the heated up media landscape, all fueled by the anxiety of the political </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">platforms in motion. Basically, I questioned the real value of even doing any writing in this platform. I still raise the question.<br />So, a few posts, then and again, and time will reveal whether the hiatus was of any benefit or value. I will post those articles of interest to me, and invite any responses.-MS</span></span></h1><h1 class="title">The Real Top Ten Stories of the Past Decade</h1> <p class="author">by Robert Freeman</p> <p>The media are awash with talking heads bloviating about the top stories of the last decade. The wired-in society. The growth of organic food. The new frugality. This is the ritual that reveals their true function in the culture: pacification. It's their way of signaling the masses that Bigger Thinkers are looking after things, so go back to your Wii or Survivor or Facebook reveries.</p> <p>The amazing thing is how little is ever mentioned about the stories that really mattered, those that affected the very nature of our society, its institutions, and the relation of the people to their state and society.</p> <p>Those stories paint a picture of danger, of a people who have lost control of their government and the corporations that own it. But you'll hear nary a word about such difficult truths from any storyteller in the conventional media.</p> <p>So here, in no particular order, are my Top Ten Stories of the Naughties, the ones that really matter.</p> <ol type="1"><li><b>The Supreme Court hijacking the 2000 presidential election</b>. This isn't even a historical controversy anymore. Al Gore won the national popular vote by 570,000. And we now know he would have won the Florida vote as well if the vote counting had not been stopped by the Supreme Court. This was literally a right wing judicial coup d' etat, so it's understandable that it's never mentioned in the "right" kind of circles. </li></ol> <ol start="2" type="1"><li><b>Bush knew of 9/11 long before it actually happened</b>. Three years before Bush took office, the neo-cons' Project For a New American Century called for a "new Pearl Harbor" to galvanize the nation into a war to seize Middle East oil. And even before the event itself, Bush-as-president was warned dozens of times of the imminent attack, the most notorious being the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S". Amazingly nothing was done to prevent the attack. But even less is it advertised that Bush knew. </li></ol><ol start="3" type="1"><li><b>Iraq was all premised on lies, yet we're still there.</b> Saddam Hussein wasn't pursuing Weapons of Mass Destruction. He wasn't involved in 9/11. He wasn't engaged with Al Qaeda. As with the 2000 election hijacking, we know all these things. And we know they were false at the time they were proffered. Yet, there we are, with no intent to leave, our very presence spitting in the face of International Law and the international community we so unctuously pretend to respect. </li></ol><ol start="4" type="1"><li><b>The Global War on Terror</b>. Or more specifically, the ease with which the "GWOT" has replaced the Cold War as the justification for the ever-increasing militarization of society. What happened to the post-Cold War "Peace Dividend"? The U.S continues to spend more on the military than all the rest of the world combined. It continues to maintain over 700 military bases around the world. And it continues to manufacture excuses for foreign interventions whenever weapons makers and military logistics companies need more profits — which is forever. </li></ol><ol start="5" type="1"><li><b>The fact that 2/3 of all economic growth went to top 1%. </b> John Kennedy's social contract had a rising tide lifting all boats. But over the last decade 2/3 of all economic growth has gone to the top 1% of income earners. Meanwhile the middle class has suffered a $13 trillion writedown in wealth as a result of the housing collapse. The banking bailout and the health care "reform" debate showed as never before the extent to which corporations have captured government and use it to redirect national wealth to themselves and their owners. </li></ol><ol start="6" type="1"><li><b>The Neo-Feudalization of the American economy</b>. The top 1% of wealth holders own 41% of all the assets in the country while the bottom 40% own absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, workers are saddled with $12 trillion of national debt, an effective indentured servitude that will bind them to their corporate masters for the rest of their lives. This is the working definition of feudalism, where the rich own everything and everybody else has nothing but their proffered labor and their obligations to their masters. The Hapsburgs, the Tudors, and the Bourbons would be jealous. </li></ol><ol start="7" type="1"><li><b>The surrender of civil liberties.</b> Despite the Fourth Amendment supposedly protecting us against unreasonable searches and seizures, the government can now read your email and listen to your phone calls without any probable cause. The Obama administration has gone to court to prevent the re-institution of Habeas Corpus, suspended during the Bush administration. We are much less free, much less protected from brutalization by our own government than we were just ten years ago. </li></ol><ol start="8" type="1"><li><b>The failure of "the free market" to sustain prosperity.</b> The "free market" has long been an ideological dodge used to resist real government regulation of the economy. Still, the ideal was supposed to deliver prosperity in a stable, sustainable matter. Now we have the greatest global economic collapse since the Great Depression, with the government transferring $11 trillion to the banks to cover their sociopathically greedy bets that went bust. All in the name of deregulation, with future regulation vigorously resisted. Is this a deranged country or what? </li></ol><ol start="9" type="1"><li><b>The collapse of the media.</b> We once imagined it would guard the hen house. Yet that was an anomaly, a freak event around Vietnam and Watergate when it slipped its leash. Since then, sixty independent media outlets have consolidated into five, all retailing the ideology of the powerful, the perpetrators, laundering their lies, covering up the truth, and harassing the truth tellers. In every story mentioned above, the mainstream media have worked to ensure that the people didn't know the truth about the forfeiture of their government, their wealth, their security, and their rights. </li></ol><ol start="10" type="1"><li><b>The meaninglessness of elections.</b> This is the most embittering revelation of all. Despite the greatest electoral majority since Johnson crushed Goldwater in '64, Barrack Obama has betrayed everything he ran on. In every case where he had the opportunity to confront power — in financial bailouts, financial regulation, health care, wars and military spending, utilities and global warming, national surveillance — Obama has sided with the rich and powerful against the interests of the American people. He has probably engendered more cynicism, more disaffection with government than any president since Richard Nixon. It will deal a staggering blow to the hopes of mobilizing masses of people again for a real takeback of government. And he's not even one year into it. </li></ol><p>History paints decades with broad brushes-the Roaring Twenties, The Depression, World War II. Historians will look back on the Naughts as the time when Americans Lost Their Country. It was the decade when all the institutions that they believed would protect them — the media, the courts, Congress, the market, a messianic new president — in fact betrayed them. It will forever more be a different country.</p> <p>But not just yet. Did I tell you about the big move to locally-grown produce? </p>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-17912452261843174302009-09-25T17:53:00.000-04:002009-09-25T17:53:03.674-04:00Facebook | My Links<a href="http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=583590401&share_id=136935854308&comments=1&s136935854308=">Facebook My Links</a>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-17387279003614722822009-09-20T17:44:00.001-04:002009-09-20T17:44:17.829-04:00Toronto Wrap: Indie Bloodbath<a href="http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/2009/09/19/toronto_film_festival_winners_and_losers/">Toronto Wrap: Indie Bloodbath</a><br /><br />Shared via <a href="http://addthis.com">AddThis</a><br />javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-79887311361956693832009-07-17T20:03:00.002-04:002009-07-17T20:09:59.623-04:00Filmmaker Magazine 25 New Faces of Independent Film<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzeOPQVzW1cTb7UjjpXstW3ZR4cQASp1mtU9VKJzx_NidzLJp6zxgmBvyu_n4phdI0gAKZSp54GaQOqFWDTyfQIyvLwij-_Jcj_HV1CLBrLMtc2Aiy1-u09WiMbZl5YtXEVOSn0w/s1600-h/Sebastian+Silva.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 400px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 268px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5359585696837691554" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzeOPQVzW1cTb7UjjpXstW3ZR4cQASp1mtU9VKJzx_NidzLJp6zxgmBvyu_n4phdI0gAKZSp54GaQOqFWDTyfQIyvLwij-_Jcj_HV1CLBrLMtc2Aiy1-u09WiMbZl5YtXEVOSn0w/s400/Sebastian+Silva.jpg" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://www.indiewire.com/article/filmmakers_25_new_faces_of_independent_film/">Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film</a><br /><br />Here are the new filmmmaker faces that you've not heard of...yet...</div><br /><div>Every year, this announcemnet is heralded as the new turks or new crop of indie cinmeatic voices. Some may reveal themselves to really bring a fresh voice to the screen, while others invariably fade away, and often not due to their own efforts, but simply because the film industry eats their young, whether through lack of funding on their projects, or the ever changing demands of distribution and their films die on the vine. </div><br /><div>No matter what the case, these are filmmakers worth discovering....and may even come to a theatre near you...or DVD, or VOD, or, or....</div>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-1777919264122811262009-04-23T23:13:00.004-04:002009-04-23T23:32:13.837-04:00Sundance or Tribeca....<em><span style="font-size:85%;">From Salon.com, and Andrew O'Hehir, who writes on independent film. My comments are at bottom, in response to letter writers about his article. -ms</span></em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVpDGslxES5gpHCHP-Z3bLnGExJrktZzbLP9Q8Hlf3-gYDHPnU53PQaastsONo4aD3qs9JHNpPIc4Hqje287e2471anDvshZY6xRpSh5wrFPd4k_IEpnIsy3SNBl4lxRwEdJhgEQ/s1600-h/DeNiro.bmp"><em><span style="font-size:85%;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5328092271624396770" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 215px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVpDGslxES5gpHCHP-Z3bLnGExJrktZzbLP9Q8Hlf3-gYDHPnU53PQaastsONo4aD3qs9JHNpPIc4Hqje287e2471anDvshZY6xRpSh5wrFPd4k_IEpnIsy3SNBl4lxRwEdJhgEQ/s400/DeNiro.bmp" border="0" /></span></em></a><em><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></em><br /><strong>Across its eight erratic years of existence, the Tribeca Film Festival -- which opened its slim and trim, Second Great Depression-era 2009 edition on Wednesday night with the premiere of Woody Allen's "Whatever Works"</strong> -- has largely succeeded in drawing large audiences and establishing its reputation as one of the film world's headline-making events. Whether that reputation is deserved, and what Tribeca's core identity is (or should be) are murkier questions.<br /><br />Questions about Tribeca's future, and how the competition within the fraternal and fratricidal little world of film festivals might shake out, were thrown into sharp relief by a recent bout of backstage intrigue that set film bloggers and other insiders atwitter. Geoffrey Gilmore, the longtime director of the Sundance Film Festival, abruptly resigned that job on Feb. 17, moving to New York as chief creative officer of Tribeca Enterprises, the entity that operates the festival and related "branded-entertainment businesses and initiatives." Oddly, Tribeca's press release announcing Gilmore's arrival went out that morning, several hours before Sundance confirmed that he was leaving. This was likely just a routine public-relations snafu, but heightened the long-standing perception that no love is lost between the two festivals.<br /><br />It took less than two weeks for Tribeca's artistic director since 2003, veteran world-cinema maven Peter Scarlet, to depart for a new gig at the Middle East International Film Festival in Abu Dhabi. (The Persian Gulf emirates are now home to several large and well-funded film festivals; Tribeca, in fact, operates a satellite festival in Qatar.) Not long after that, John Cooper, Gilmore's longtime deputy, was named to succeed his former boss at Robert Redford's Sundance festival -- whose status as the mecca of American independent film seemed, at least potentially, in question -- and the game of musical chairs was complete.<br /><br />At least in its general outlines, the whole thing sounds pretty juicy. A throwdown between two Hollywood heavyweights, Sundance founder Redford and Tribeca co-founder Robert De Niro! The laid-back, luxury-skiwear mode of the Wasatch slopes vs. the multitasking, Armani-clad bad attitude of the Big Apple! In defecting from the Utah mountains to Gotham, would Gilmore bring the Indiewood mojo of Park City -- and a wave of superior films and directors -- across the country with him? Despite its success at self-marketing, Tribeca has struggled since its inception to establish a coherent identity. Has it finally found one as the new Sundance?<br /><br />Well, maybe. But my vote is on probably not. Conversations with people who have worked at one or both festivals suggest that while there's definitely some sense of rivalry between Sundance and Tribeca, they're nowhere near a shooting war. John Cooper, the new Sundance director, says that increased competition for premieres of major films -- not just with Tribeca, but also with Toronto, South by Southwest and other festivals -- can only benefit filmmakers. "We have a lot of legacy and a lot of mythology behind us," he says. "I'm not too worried about whether we're going to get the highest caliber of films. But I kind of like the competition. When we were the only game in town, it wasn't serving the filmmaking community."<br /><br />No doubt Gilmore's arrival and Scarlet's departure mark the next phase of Tribeca's long-running quest to define itself. But as one industry source put it, "It isn't as simple as saying that Geoff came in and forced Peter out. You could say that it was all part of the same process: Peter started to see that he wasn't a good fit with Tribeca anymore, and Geoff's arrival was part of that. But Geoff isn't taking Peter's job, and those who believe that Tribeca will suddenly become Sundance because Geoff is there are just wrong."<br /><br />Gilmore's role at Tribeca, in fact, is not entirely clear. He holds a newly created senior executive position, in charge of an unspecified "global content strategy" that's likely to include digital distribution ventures and the Qatar festival, among other projects. According to people who know him well, he doesn't want to run a festival anymore and isn't supposed to be hands-on with Tribeca programming. On the other hand, whoever does wind up running the festival on a daily basis will, in all likelihood, report to him.<br /><br />Anyway, no matter how well-liked Gilmore is by filmmakers and how strongly he's identified with Sundance, that festival will be Redford's as long as he lives. Gilmore's track record and personality are probably not sufficient to cajole Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino to bring their world premieres to a festival with a brief and bewildering history instead of, say, to Sundance or Cannes or Toronto. (At this writing, it's not clear whether any one person will fill Scarlet's Tribeca post, although many observers suggest that the festival's highly regarded programming director, David Kwok, may take a more central role.)<br /><br />In asking what Tribeca is, one might well turn the question around, in Socratic fashion, and ask what the hell it isn't. At various times, Tribeca has been viewed as a philanthropic community venture, a paparazzi-friendly spectacle of red-carpet starfucking, a hometown party for the Manhattan-based independent-film industry, a marketplace (albeit a notably unsuccessful one), a spring dating-and-networking event for young New York professionals, and a broad and esoteric showcase of world cinema. "It's a very schizophrenic festival, and that goes back to its inception," said one person who has worked with both Tribeca and Sundance. "There's a lot of ambition there, and a lot of good programming. But it's a festival that has tried to be all things to all people and pretty much lacks a sense of what it is or what it wants to be."<br /><br />One thing Tribeca did very quickly was become really, really big. The festival was put together fast in 2002 by actor Robert De Niro, producer Jane Rosenthal and investor-philanthropist Craig Hatkoff (who is Rosenthal's husband), officially as a means of restarting the lower Manhattan economy after the 9/11 attacks. While there's no reason to doubt the trio's community spirit, it's clear in retrospect that De Niro and Rosenthal had been contemplating launching a new film festival in New York for some time, and the wake of 9/11 presented a unique marketing opportunity. After their first chaotic year, when almost no one in the organization had festival experience, they hired Scarlet -- who'd had a long and successful tenure at the San Francisco International Film Festival and a shorter, tumultuous one at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris -- and handed him the keys.<br /><br />That original goal, along with the festival's eponymous downtown neighborhood, were left far behind as Tribeca rode a seemingly booming economy and an attendant explosion of independent-film production deep into the George W. Bush years. By 2006, Tribeca was screening an unmanageable and seemingly uncurated roster of 170-odd feature films (along with numerous shorts) at venues all over Manhattan, making it one of the world's largest and sprawliest festivals. A year later, hubris was in full effect. "We should become, if not the dominant festival, then one of the great festivals of all time," co-founder Hatkoff told the Hollywood Reporter in 2007, while Rosenthal made clear that Tribeca's goal was to be the fifth major event on a calendar that also includes Sundance, Cannes, Toronto and Venice.<br /><br />While bigness, status and importance can be useful marketing concepts -- especially in New York, home to the Yankees, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the financial industry and other not-so-widely-loved institutions built on excessive enormousness -- they don't signify an aesthetics or a sensibility. As I and many other journalists have complained in public and in private, programming throughout the Scarlet era was wildly hit-and-miss, with the accent on the miss. (Among publicists, critics and reporters, the admittedly cruel term "Tri-dreck-a" is not unknown.) At least when the festival booked red-carpet premieres of "Spider-Man 3" and "Speed Racer," you knew what you were getting and why it was there. But I can't tell you how many mediocre Amerindie clunkers I've sat through in the cavernous Tribeca Performing Arts Center, presented as major weekend premieres because of the presence of a B-list celebrity or two.<br /><br />On the other hand, those overstuffed, bubble-economy Tribeca lineups allowed Scarlet to bring in piles of unlikely art movies from all over the globe, things you'd never heard of before and would never see again. Personally, I'll accept having suffered through Adam Carolla's star turn as a 40-year-old Olympic boxer in "The Hammer," or the ick-making love affair between Alec Baldwin and Sarah Michelle Gellar in "Suburban Girl," since I also got to see a tremendous Egyptian soap opera called "The Yacoubian Building" and a hypnotic Beirut-set thriller called "The Last Man" that must be the slowest-paced serial-killer movie in history.<br /><br />"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall," as the Good Book instructs us, and as of April 2009 Tribeca's schemes for world domination seem to be on hold. Of course, the fall that has brought Tribeca's lineup down to 85 or so features this year -- half the 2006 total -- is one that has downsized the rest of us too. The Hollywood red-carpet premieres are pretty much gone with the wind, unless you count such relatively low-wattage phenomena as Allen's opening-night film, Spike Lee's basketball documentary "Kobe Doin' Work" and "My Life in Ruins," the new vehicle for "Big Fat Greek Wedding" star and creator Nia Vardalos.<br /><br />"The reasons why Tribeca has downsized this year are 90 percent economic," said one festival insider, "but anytime you can do some more self-editing, some more curation, it's a good thing." This is a festival that badly needs to find its soul, you might say. While that period when Scarlet seemingly flung anything and everything up there on the screen -- and I know him well enough to know that he knew a lot of those movies were crap -- yielded some interesting surprises, it didn't do the Tribeca brand any favors.<br /><br />This year's lineup still bears Scarlet's fingerprints, with an intriguing selection of international art films, most notably from the Middle East and East Asia. (I'll post a preview of Tribeca's most interesting offerings on Friday.) That may well change. Several observers suggest that Rosenthal and De Niro became dissatisfied with Scarlet's "esoteric" tastes over the long haul and gradually nudged him aside. Gilmore's arrival may indeed signal that they want to move Tribeca back toward a more conventional film-festival identity, built around premieres of mid-budget, independent American film. While that might sound logical on the face of things, I suspect it's a poor survival strategy for a severe recession.<br /><br />Tribeca is unlikely to prevail in a direct competition with Sundance for the hottest indie premieres, and it definitively lacks the DIY community spirit that has made South by Southwest the go-to festival for ultra-low-budget filmmakers with no expectations of a theatrical release. Right now it's a festival that serves several different incongruous niches. It's a terrific showcase for American documentaries (having premiered the Oscar-winning "Taxi to the Dark Side" and the Oscar-nominated "Jesus Camp," among many others). It hosts the country's best mini-festival of sports films, which began as an ESPN sponsorship deal but has gotten more interesting every year. It serves Scarlet-esque Manhattan cinephiles who want to see Ukrainian and Tunisian films, and Twitterized Manhattan scene-makers who want to be where the action is.<br /><br />Presumably Gilmore and the new Tribeca regime hope to craft an identity that creates something holistic from those miscellaneous pieces, but what that might be and how to get there remain mysterious. "I'll tell you what Tribeca has done," said one observer. "They've sold a hell of a lot of tickets in New York City. They've proved that there's room for a big, populist festival that isn't elitist" -- in other words, that isn't Lincoln Center's New York Film Festival. "They've got the biggest media market in the country and a ton of potential sponsorship dollars, even in a recession. They're not going to beat Cannes or Sundance at their own game. They're just not, and they shouldn't even try. But there's plenty to work with there, and Geoff Gilmore wouldn't have taken that job if he didn't see that."<br /><br /><br />** ** **<br />In response to several letters posted by others, at Salon.com, <a href="http://letters.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/feature/2009/04/23/tribeca_sundance/view/?show=all">http://letters.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/feature/2009/04/23/tribeca_sundance/view/?show=all</a>, I wrote:<br /><br /><strong>The previous posts seem to not have even read the article at all!</strong><br /><br />Films are really in trouble, to say nothing about Sundance or Tribeca, not from fest organizers, or filmmakers, if the previous posters are any indication, as they blather about hair, wrinkles, all superficial nonsense, or how many films are being shown, etc. Has any of them even been to either, or any, film festivals?!<br />What matters is the film, pure and simple. I didn't see anyone talk about the FILMS! To be certain, Tribeca arose from the post-9/11 ashes, and we are better for it; it's NY-centric, even populist, by origin. It's "We Heart NY". Scarlet or Gillmore, it's still in it's brash infancy. It isn't, and can't be, the venerated NY Film Festival at Lincoln Center, let alone Sundance - it's apples and pears.<br />Sundance - despite up/down years, is everyone's favorite whipping boy, and memories are too short, or even non-existent, judging again from the previous posters' comments. Their criticisms are feeble, and fatuous. Sundance has been the most significant forum and venue for indie film in America. One doesn't have to see or like any or all of them. Festivals by their nature are proving grounds, pushing boundaries, and by their merit demonstrate the vitality of filmmaking - or lack thereof. No one expects all the films to be Boffo Box Makers, and truth is, there are too many festivals, anyhow. Besides, no one has a crystal ball. H-wood rolls the dice everytime, with no guarantees.<br />Sundance has spawned Slamdance, Nodance, etc. Even the much beloved Telluride doesn't/can't do what Sundance atttempts, and vice-versa. What's vital is the creative spark it lights, not the accountants who add the box office. O'Hehir rightly sees the tabloid dustup being tossed for what it is, silly, and what the real issues, beyond the big personalities, are: the quality, and future, of film, whether festival identity, or theatrical distribution challenges (which are more important and pressing), and that's how it's always been. The "Industry" has bigger problems/issues than size of red-carpet, or the glitterati posing and preening.javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-55411412230099061502009-03-15T15:03:00.004-04:002009-03-19T13:17:01.276-04:00SXSW Film FestivalI'm at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas! The capital city is a hub of film and media development and befitting Texas, a rich and wild town, proud of it's history and even more intent on its future. I'll be examining and reviewing the three legs of the Fest - film, interactive media, and music, posting reviews and encounters, the scenes of Austin. As thousands of cinephiles, musicians, and the uber-geekdom of interactive media (gaming, etc.) coalesce, the emerging cultural stew is set to create a "state of the art" as only "South By..." does. <br />Along with attempting to absorb nine days of film, one can't swing a guitar around without hitting a musician as over 1800 bands are performing in the myriad venues all over town, for a five day blast of sound and fury. Stay tuned.....javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-62571167499185393142008-11-08T02:30:00.003-05:002008-11-08T03:39:17.504-05:00Who Is Bill Ayers and Why He Was Used by the McCain/Palin Campaign<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAcfW6jEC2ggPtL_sS3uas3-EF8Fq3A1fhq7hNaGDGvIfrnQBW8brPlHgw4fEiCjS-8y7HmO2wbXf8zzgj79UbiwWBsTnPue1HjIFaR4iPuO7IGYJnMonEATjY2GB_S9GgIKdUHw/s1600-h/Billl+Ayers.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5266186136531882162" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 238px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 275px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAcfW6jEC2ggPtL_sS3uas3-EF8Fq3A1fhq7hNaGDGvIfrnQBW8brPlHgw4fEiCjS-8y7HmO2wbXf8zzgj79UbiwWBsTnPue1HjIFaR4iPuO7IGYJnMonEATjY2GB_S9GgIKdUHw/s400/Billl+Ayers.jpg" border="0" /></a> <strong>Bill Ayers looks back on a surreal campaign season. </strong><br /><p><em>The saga of Bill Ayers, poster radical for the McCain/Palin campaign, but before them the Clinton campaign, too, is a painful reminder the political and culture wars of the 60's still reach deeply in the psyche of the US political landscape. The notoriety he gained from his participation with the Weather Underground made him - and that agit-prop group - a sitting duck for criticism, scapegoating, and easily exploited in the effort to discredit Barack Obama. The 'price' he has paid - is huge, as is the cost to the very society and system that continues to mask and conceal the military violence that is paraded around as "patriotism". Here, Ayers speaks out - yet again - on the reality of his actual participation and the statement about our society today. The hopeful aspect is in the repudiation of the tactics used against Obama by resurrecting and distorting the 60's and the political movements of the day, and to bring the focus on each of us taking responsibility for our actions to seek and realize social justice. - MS</em></p><p><strong></p></strong><br />Whew! What was all that mess? I'm still in a daze, sorting it all out, decompressing.<br />Pass the Vitamin C.<br />For the past few years, I have gone about my business, hanging out with my kids and, now, my grandchildren, taking care of our elders (they moved in as the kids moved out), going to work, teaching and writing. And every day, I participate in the never-ending effort to build a powerful and irresistible movement for peace and social justice.<br />In years past, I would now and then - often unpredictably - appear in the newspapers or on TV, sometimes with a reference to Fugitive Days, my 2001 memoir of the exhilarating and difficult years of resistance against the American war in Vietnam. It was a time when the world was in flames, revolution was in the air, and the serial assassinations of black leaders disrupted our utopian dreams.<br />These media episodes of fleeting notoriety always led to some extravagant and fantastic assertions about what I did, what I might have said and what I probably believe now.<br />It was always a bit surreal. Then came this political season.<br />During the primary, the blogosphere was full of chatter about my relationship with President-elect Barack Obama. We had served together on the board of the Woods Foundation and knew one another as neighbors in Chicago's Hyde Park. In 1996, at a coffee gathering that my wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and I held for him, I made a $200 donation to his campaign for the Illinois State Senate.<br />Obama's political rivals and enemies thought they saw an opportunity to deepen a dishonest perception that he is somehow un-American, alien, linked to radical ideas, a closet terrorist who sympathizes with extremism - and they pounced.<br />Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) campaign provided the script, which included guilt by association, demonization of people Obama knew (or might have known), creepy questions about his background and dark hints about hidden secrets yet to be uncovered.<br />On March 13, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), apparently in an attempt to reassure the base,- sat down for an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News. McCain was not yet aware of the narrative Hannity had been spinning for months, and so Hannity filled him in: Ayers is an unrepentant "terrorist," he explained, "On 9/11, of all days, he had an article where he bragged about bombing our Pentagon, bombing the Capitol and bombing New York City police headquarters. ... He said, 'I regret not doing more.'"<br />McCain couldn't believe it.<br />Neither could I.<br />On the campaign trail, McCain immediately got on message. I became a prop, a cartoon character created to be pummeled.<br />When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin got hold of it, the attack went viral. At a now-famous Oct. 4 rally, she said Obama was Ïpallin' around with terrorists.- (I pictured us sharing a milkshake with two straws.)<br />The crowd began chanting, "Kill him!" "Kill him"- It was downhill from there.<br />My voicemail filled up with hate messages. They were mostly from men, all venting and sweating and breathing heavily. A few threats: "Watch out!" and "You deserve to be shot." And some e-mails, like this one I got from satan@hell.com: "I'm coming to get you and when I do, I'll water-board you."<br />The police lieutenant who came to copy down those threats deadpanned that he hoped the guy who was going to shoot me got there before the guy who was going to water-board me, since it would be most foul to be tortured and then shot. (We have been pals ever since he was first assigned to investigate threats made against me in 1987, after I was hired as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.)<br />The good news was that every time McCain or Palin mentioned my name, they lost a point or two in the polls. The cartoon invented to hurt Obama was now poking holes in the rapidly sinking McCain-Palin ship.<br />That '60s Show<br />On Aug. 28, Stephen Colbert, the faux right-wing commentator from Comedy Central who channels Bill O'Reilly on steroids, observed:<br />To this day, when our country holds a presidential election, we judge the candidates through the lens of the 1960s. ... We all know Obama is cozy with William Ayers a '60s radical who planted a bomb in the capital building and then later went on to even more heinous crimes by becoming a college professor. ... Let us keep fighting the culture wars of our grandparents. The '60s are a political gift that keeps on giving.<br />It was inevitable. McCain would bet the house on a dishonest and largely discredited vision of the '60s, which was the defining decade for him. He built his political career on being a prisoner of war in Vietnam.<br />The '60s - as myth and symbol - is much abused: the downfall of civilization in one account, a time of defeat and humiliation in a second, and a perfect moment of righteous opposition, peace and love in a third.<br />The idea that the 2008 election may be the last time in American political life that the '60s plays any role whatsoever is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, let's get over the nostalgia and move on. On the other, the lessons we might have learned from the black freedom movement and from the resistance against the Vietnam War have never been learned. To achieve this would require that we face history fully and honestly, something this nation has never done.<br />The war in Vietnam was an illegal invasion and occupation, much of it conducted as a war of terror against the civilian population. The U.S. military killed millions of Vietnamese in air raids - like the one conducted by McCain - and entire areas of the country were designated free-fire zones, where American pilots indiscriminately dropped surplus ordinance - an immoral enterprise by any measure.<br />What Is Really Important<br />McCain and Palin - or as our late friend Studs Terkel put it, "Joe McCarthy in drag" - would like to bury the '60s. The '60s, after all, was a time of rejecting obedience and conformity in favor of initiative and courage. The '60s pushed us to a deeper appreciation of the humanity of every human being. And that is the threat it poses to the right wing, hence the attacks and all the guilt by association.<br />McCain and Palin demanded to "know the full extent" of the Obama-Ayers "relationship" so that they can know if Obama, as Palin put it, "is telling the truth to the American people or not."<br />This is just plain stupid.<br />Obama has continually been asked to defend something that ought to be at democracy's heart: the importance of talking to as many people as possible in this complicated and wildly diverse society, of listening with the possibility of learning something new, and of speaking with the possibility of persuading or influencing others.<br />The McCain-Palin attacks not only involved guilt by association, they also assumed that one must apply a political litmus test to begin a conversation.<br />On Oct. 4, Palin described her supporters as those who "see America as the greatest force for good in this world" and as a "beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy." But Obama, she said, "Is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America." In other words, there are "real" Americans - and then there are the rest of us.<br />In a robust and sophisticated democracy, political leaders - and all of us - ought to seek ways to talk with many people who hold dissenting, or even radical, ideas. Lacking that simple and yet essential capacity to question authority, we might still be burning witches and enslaving our fellow human beings today.<br />Maybe we could welcome our current situation - torn by another illegal war, as it was in the '60s - as an opportunity to search for the new.<br />Perhaps we might think of ourselves not as passive consumers of politics but as fully mobilized political actors. Perhaps we might think of our various efforts now, as we did then, as more than a single campaign, but rather as our movement-in-the-making.<br />We might find hope in the growth of opposition to war and occupation worldwide. Or we might be inspired by the growing movements for reparations and prison abolition, or the rising immigrant rights movement and the stirrings of working people everywhere, or by gay and lesbian and transgender people courageously pressing for full recognition.<br />Yet hope - my hope, our hope - resides in a simple self-evident truth: the future is unknown, and it is also entirely unknowable.<br />History is always in the making. It's up to us. It is up to me and to you. Nothing is predetermined. That makes our moment on this earth both hopeful and all the more urgent - we must find ways to become real actors, to become authentic subjects in our own history.<br />We may not be able to will a movement into being, but neither can we sit idly for a movement to spring full-grown, as from the head of Zeus.<br />We have to agitate for democracy and egalitarianism, press harder for human rights, learn to build a new society through our self-transformations and our limited everyday struggles.<br />At the turn of the last century, Eugene Debs, the great Socialist Party leader from Terre Haute, Ind., told a group of workers in Chicago, "If I could lead you into the Promised Land, I would not do it, because someone else would come along and lead you <br />In this time of new beginnings and rising expectations, it is even more urgent that we figure out how to become the people we have been waiting to be.<br />---------<br />Bill Ayers is a Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of "Fugitive Days" (Beacon) and co-author, with Bernardine Dohrn, of "Race Course: Against White Supremacy" (Third World Press).javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-55318263249093329722008-11-01T11:09:00.002-04:002008-11-01T11:16:24.649-04:00It Is Now Absolutely Crystal Clear That Republican Rule Is Dangerous and Authoritarian<div><br /><br /><div>By John Dean, FindLaw.com</div><br /><br /><div>November 1, 2008<br />Republicans rule, rather than govern, when they are in power by imposing their authoritarian conservative philosophy on everyone, as their answer for everything. This works for them because their interest is in power, and in what it can do for those who think as they do. Ruling, of course, must be distinguished from governing, which is a more nuanced process that entails give-and-take and the kind of compromises that are often necessary to find a consensus and solutions that will best serve the interests of all Americans.<br />Republicans' authoritarian rule can also be characterized by its striking incivility and intolerance toward those who do not view the world as Republicans do. Their insufferable attitude is not dangerous in itself, but it is employed to accomplish what they want, which it to take care of themselves and those who work to keep them in power.<br />Authoritarian conservatives are primarily anti-government, except where they b<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_JrgXO3W1UeCcGOtZHnS5rAwl7fr9_iwseHgztXs5Bc3OSDCB_LceJudP-WYoj0btB86Rku1XW-Xd3m_egbMwW6tVskunD8Sq4UYbAfRQeq44GwWiLENdDKuai_9pVPLRYL1XYA/s1600-h/bush_flipping_finger.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5263707323515685122" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 301px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 223px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_JrgXO3W1UeCcGOtZHnS5rAwl7fr9_iwseHgztXs5Bc3OSDCB_LceJudP-WYoj0btB86Rku1XW-Xd3m_egbMwW6tVskunD8Sq4UYbAfRQeq44GwWiLENdDKuai_9pVPLRYL1XYA/s400/bush_flipping_finger.jpg" border="0" /></a>elieve the government can be useful to impose moral or social order (for example, with respect to matters like abortion, prayer in schools, or prohibiting sexually-explicit information from public view). Similarly, Republicans' limited-government attitude does not apply regarding national security, where they feel there can never be too much government activity - nor are the rights and liberties of individuals respected when national security is involved. Authoritarian Republicans do oppose the government interfering with markets and the economy, however -- and generally oppose the government's doing anything to help anyone they feel should be able to help themselves.<br />In my book Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches, I set forth the facts regarding the consequences of the Republicans' controlling government for too many years. No Republican -- nor anyone else, for that matter -- has refuted these facts, and for good reason: They are irrefutable. </div><div><br /><strong>The McCain/Palin Ticket Perfectly Fits the Authoritarian Conservative Mold<br /></strong>Duri<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDXyy8BXXcC-2RSRh1lWkTSJy3VxIySP5qvCtdOZhj1prg_6TOcnYpFHXm8t8WCXm4MnSYEmGGpRCHLRrdKTXq6M8YZpABrYst8fBJ50el-_dE14sR4YHh3g94dMoBtOnfskyBJg/s1600-h/mccain.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5263708089181035298" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 100px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 120px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDXyy8BXXcC-2RSRh1lWkTSJy3VxIySP5qvCtdOZhj1prg_6TOcnYpFHXm8t8WCXm4MnSYEmGGpRCHLRrdKTXq6M8YZpABrYst8fBJ50el-_dE14sR4YHh3g94dMoBtOnfskyBJg/s400/mccain.jpg" border="0" /></a>ng the 2008 presidential campaign, Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican candidates, have shown themselves to be unapologetic and archetypical authoritarian conservatives. Indeed, their campaign has warmed the hearts of fellow authoritarians, who applaud them for their negativity, nastiness, and dishonest ploys and only criticize them for not offering more of the same.<br />The McCain/Palin campaign has assumed a typical authoritarian posture: The candidates provide no true, specific proposals to address America's needs. Rather, they simply ask voters to "trust us" and suggest that their opponents - Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden - are not "real Americans" like McCain, Palin, and the voters they are seeking to court. Accordingly, McCain and Plain have called Obama "a socialist," "a redistributionist," "a Marxist," and "a communist" - without a shred of evidence to support their name-calling, for these terms are pejorative, rather than in any manner descriptive. This is the way authoritarian leaders operate.<br />In my book Conservatives Without Conscience, I set forth the traits of authoritarian leaders and followers, which have been distilled from a half-century of empirical research, during which thousands of people have voluntarily been interviewed by social scientists. The touch points in these somewhat-overlapping lists of character traits provide a clear picture of the characters of both John McCain and Sarah Palin.<br />McCain, especially, fits perfectly as an authoritarian leader. Such leaders possess most, if not all, of these traits:<br />* dominating<br />* opposes equality<br />* desirous of personal power<br />* amoral<br />* intimidating and bullying<br />* faintly hedonistic<br />* vengeful<br />* pitiless<br />* exploitive<br />* manipulative<br />* dishonest<br />* cheats to win<br />* highly prejudiced (racist, sexist, homophobic)<br />* mean-spirited<br />* militant<br />* nationalistic<br />* tells others what they want to hear<br />* takes advantage of "suckers"<br />* specializes in creating false images to sell self<br />* may or may not be religious<br />* usually politically and economically conservative/Republican<br />Incidentally, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney also can be described by these well-defined and typical traits -- which is why a McCain presidency is so likely to be nearly identical to a Bush presidency.<br />Clearly, Sarah Palin also has some qualities typical of authoritarian leaders, not to mention almost all of the traits found among authoritarian followers. Specifically, such followers can be described as follows:<br />* submissive to authority<br />* aggressive on behalf of authority<br />* highly conventional in their behavior<br />* highly religious<br />* possessing moderate to little education<br />* trusting of untrustworthy authorities<br />* prejudiced (particularly against homosexuals and followers of religions other than their own)<br />* mean-spirited<br />* narrow-minded<br />* intolerant<br />* bullying<br />* zealous<br />* dogmatic<br />* uncritical toward chosen authority<br />* hypocritical<br />* inconsistent and contradictory<br />* prone to panic easily<br />* highly self-righteous<br />* moralistic<br />* strict disciplinarians<br />* severely punitive<br />* demanding loyalty and returning it<br />* possessing little self-awareness<br />* usually politically and economically conservative/Republican<br />The leading authority on right-wing authoritarianism, a man who devoted his career to developing hard empirical data about these people and their beliefs, is Robert Altemeyer. Altemeyer, a social scientist based in Canada, flushed out these typical character traits in decades of testing.<br />Altemeyer believes about 25 percent of the adult population in the United States is solidly authoritarian (with that group mostly composed of followers, and a small percentage of potential leaders). It is in these ranks of some 70 million that we find the core of the McCain/Palin supporters. They are people who are, in Altemeyer's words, are "so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds."<br />The Problem with Electing Authoritarian Conservatives<br />What is wrong with being an authoritarian conservative? Well, if you want to take the country where they do, nothing. "They would march America into a dictatorship and probably feel that things had improved as a result," Altemeyer told me. "The problem is that these authoritarian followers are much more active than the rest of the country. They have the mentality of 'old-time religion' on a crusade, and they generously give money, time and effort to the cause. They proselytize; they lick stamps; they put pressure on loved ones; and they revel in being loyal to a cohesive group of like thinkers. And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going to go away."<br />I would nominate McCain's "Joe the Plumber" as a new poster-boy of the authoritarian followers. He is a believer, and he has signed on. On November 4, 2008, we will learn how many more Americans will join the ranks of the authoritarians.<br />Frankly, the fact that the pre-election polls are close - after eight years of authoritarian leadership from Bush and Cheney, and given its disastrous results -- shows that many Americans either do not realize where a McCain/Palin presidency might take us, or they are happy to go there. Frankly, it scares the hell out of me, for there is only one way to deal with these conservative zealots: Keep them out of power.<br />This election should be a slam dunk for Barack Obama, who has run a masterful campaign. It was no small undertaking winning the nomination from Hillary Clinton, and in doing so, he has shown without any doubt (in my mind anyway) that he is not only qualified to be president, but that he might be a once-in-a-lifetime leader who can forever change the nation and the world for the better.<br />If Obama is rejected on November 4th for another authoritarian conservative like McCain, I must ask if Americans are sufficiently intelligent to competently govern themselves. I can understand authoritarian conservatives voting for McCain, for they know no better. It is well-understood that most everyone votes with his or her heart, not his or her head. Polls show that 81 percent of Americans "feel" (in their hearts and their heads) that our country is going the wrong way. How could anyone with such thoughts and feelings vote for more authoritarian conservatism, which has done so much to take the nation in the wrong direction?<br />We will all find out on (or about) November 5th.<br />John W. Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former counsel to President Nixon. </div></div>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-35744489264427904692008-09-26T00:22:00.001-04:002008-09-26T00:43:30.349-04:00Shock Doctrine exchange on Bill Maher<p><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/uCHBLt-w9wE&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/uCHBLt-w9wE&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p>Naomi Klein discusses recent bailouts of Wall Street titans on Real Time with Bill Maher. Sept. 19, 2008</p>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-40937820357121034612008-09-23T03:40:00.004-04:002008-09-23T03:56:59.799-04:00Now is the Time to Resist Wall Street's Shock Doctrine<div><span style="font-size:85%;">Not alone, but clearly the most articulate critic of globalization, with her book <em>No Logo</em>, and last year's breakthrough critique <em>Shock Doctrine</em>, she now urges the public to stand forcefully and resist the blank check proposals being rushed through the Capital, with the fallout of the Wall Street implosion still unfolding. Along with Barbara Ehrenreich, she addresses the root causes of economic injustice and disparity as we are now unavoidably seeing the harvest of the greed and avarice in the monied, investor class that has been running unfettered and unregulated. The chickens have come home to roost, or is it their eggs have hatched and they are not a pretty sight. - MS</span><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP5ac4y0GhhgAMLOzjxcaV_zkfsLk90BUKg-frUP5k5bLoue0rGN7Y8IBHV4dEb4IGPiH4xxVQNCLebZaF3Pg7HSTXJQGUFpz_uwjLaUBEPEVqTDEyOvrj1zY-eeT4S9bycZgavw/s1600-h/Naomi+Klein+photo.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249118795505329314" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP5ac4y0GhhgAMLOzjxcaV_zkfsLk90BUKg-frUP5k5bLoue0rGN7Y8IBHV4dEb4IGPiH4xxVQNCLebZaF3Pg7HSTXJQGUFpz_uwjLaUBEPEVqTDEyOvrj1zY-eeT4S9bycZgavw/s400/Naomi+Klein+photo.jpg" border="0" /></a> <strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Disaster Capitalism in Action</span></strong><br />Naomi Klein, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-klein/now-is-the-time-to-resist_b_128433.html" target="_blank">Huffington Post</a>, September 22, 2008<br />I wrote The Shock Doctrine in the hopes that it would make us all better prepared for the next big shock. Well, that shock has certainly arrived, along with gloves-off attempts to use it to push through radical pro-corporate policies (which of course will further enrich the very players who created the market crisis in the first place...).The best summary of how the right plans to use the economic crisis to push through their policy wish list comes from Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. On Sunday, Gingrich laid out <a href="http://solutionsday2008.com/blog/2008/09/get-the-politicians-out-of-the-economy-recipe-for-sound-economic-growth.html" target="_blank">18 policy prescriptions</a> for Congress to take in order to "return to a Reagan-Thatcher policy of economic growth through fundamental reforms." In the midst of this economic crisis, he is actually demanding the repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which would lead to further deregulation of the financial industry. Gingrich is also calling for reforming the education system to allow "competition" (a.k.a. vouchers), strengthening border enforcement, cutting corporate taxes and his signature move: allowing offshore drilling.It would be a grave mistake to underestimate the right's ability to use this crisis -- created by deregulation and privatization -- to demand more of the same. Don't forget that Newt Gingrich's 527 organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future, is still riding the wave of success from its offshore drilling campaign, "Drill Here, Drill Now!" Just four months ago, offshore drilling was not even on the political radar and now the U.S. House of Representatives has passed supportive legislation. Gingrich is holding <a href="http://www.solutionsday2008.com/" target="_blank">an event</a> this Saturday, September 27 that will be broadcast on satellite television to shore up public support for these controversial policies.What Gingrich's wish list tells us is that the dumping of private debt into the public coffers is only stage one of the current shock. The second comes when the debt crisis currently being created by this bailout becomes the excuse to privatize social security, lower corporate taxes and cut spending on the poor. A President McCain would embrace these policies willingly. A President Obama would come under huge pressure from the think tanks and the corporate media to abandon his campaign promises and embrace austerity and "free-market stimulus."We have seen this many times before, in this country and around the world. But here's the thing: these opportunistic tactics can only work if we let them. They work when we respond to crisis by regressing, wanting to believe in "strong leaders" - even if they are the same strong leaders who used the September 11 attacks to push through the Pa<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwRIEf37UnlX6UzadHUg-F51i63-A7PSC_uWjou8v-LVIcbwiwrdBQRiN9zsup_qvhBLUWB8U2OiRoQrxTW100XzL89KiL-CT2UX79eUDVpIfDE-J_PnLyrTmZ4G7etXPGJcZNJA/s1600-h/Paulson.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249119169726251506" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" height="240" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwRIEf37UnlX6UzadHUg-F51i63-A7PSC_uWjou8v-LVIcbwiwrdBQRiN9zsup_qvhBLUWB8U2OiRoQrxTW100XzL89KiL-CT2UX79eUDVpIfDE-J_PnLyrTmZ4G7etXPGJcZNJA/s400/Paulson.jpg" width="348" border="0" /></a>triot Act and launch the illegal war in Iraq.So let's be absolutely clear: there are no saviors who are going to look out for us in this crisis. Certainly not Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, one of the companies that will benefit most from his proposed bailout (which is actually a stick up). The only hope of preventing another dose of shock politics is loud, organized grassroots pressure on all political parties: they have to know right now that after seven years of Bush, Americans are becoming shock resistant.</div></div>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-91226198540972691132008-09-21T11:39:00.003-04:002008-09-21T12:00:26.151-04:00Infinitely Sad<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLtjenhryA3UKKYzisIeGGrrOQO77Jo1ZFMPV1UXoSl6RGILQsyzXCJFAlBOTW1YbPy-puvZeFGZVVE0dWvnHCCu-ozlY4JhSg-eVKgo0yZddMa8-M29YX0GDYS48FRhDTSr949A/s1600-h/Wallace+photo+with+dog.jpg"><em><span style="font-size:85%;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5248503181745677842" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLtjenhryA3UKKYzisIeGGrrOQO77Jo1ZFMPV1UXoSl6RGILQsyzXCJFAlBOTW1YbPy-puvZeFGZVVE0dWvnHCCu-ozlY4JhSg-eVKgo0yZddMa8-M29YX0GDYS48FRhDTSr949A/s400/Wallace+photo+with+dog.jpg" border="0" /></span></em></a><em><span style="font-size:85%;"> Of all the writers from the past 10-15 years, Wallace not only stands out, he jumps beyond the bounds of common understanding. His death leaves me sad, bewildered, and a voice has been snuffed, at a time the culture needs it more than ever. - MS<br /></span></em><div><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Infinitely Sad</strong><br /></span>David Foster Wallace, self-absorbed genius.<br /><div>By Troy Patterson<br />David Foster Wallace began his review of John Updike's <em>Toward the End of Time</em> by classing Updike, along with Philip Roth and Norman Mailer, as "the Great Male Narcissists who've dominated postwar American fiction." The word narcissist isn't strictly disapproving there. One reason that the piece, 10 years after its publication, remains more memorable than its ostensible object is that Wallace offhandedly engaged the "radical self-absorption" of this Greatest Generation of Quality Lit—"probably the single most self-absorbed generation since Louis XIV"—in a complicated way. He saw that narcissism as the force both animating moving prose and repelling younger readers in its involute explorations. He imagined—in a gorgeous little gesture of telescoped perspective—how things might appear to the GMNs, "in their senescence": "It must seem to them no coincidence that the prospect of their own deaths appears backlit by the approaching millennium and online predictions of the death of the novel as we know it. When a solipsist dies, after all, everything goes with him."<br />Of the three older writers, Wallace most closely resembled Mailer. Both earned their celebri<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNl74myAhk8ruMmdwCU_iuB4rI5nuTrAKSpTrSb4ipMlXtvb3Mw0kNCpbZjhIT20TyaMA3UsIsMJNCjhk_w2LXkzZDrz2XFJcrLnoMnmGfYlX6uekNGgt-opPbqGioz8XZtDEa1g/s1600-h/David+Foster+Wallace+pic.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5248500190369237522" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNl74myAhk8ruMmdwCU_iuB4rI5nuTrAKSpTrSb4ipMlXtvb3Mw0kNCpbZjhIT20TyaMA3UsIsMJNCjhk_w2LXkzZDrz2XFJcrLnoMnmGfYlX6uekNGgt-opPbqGioz8XZtDEa1g/s400/David+Foster+Wallace+pic.jpg" border="0" /></a>ty and electric esteem—becoming not just famous writers but author-heroes—on the strength of maximalist novels of ambition-announcing bulk and scope (Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, Wallace's Infinite Jest). And both produced nonfiction so bold and inventive as to surpass their achievements as novelists. As a journalist, Wallace, who died in a suicide last Friday at the age of 46, left American literature with a body of work as fine as any produced in America in the last two decades.<br />His own self-absorption played no small part in the achievement. In his fiction, Wallace drew on the examples of Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and their less famous peers in an attempt to invest Postmodernist high jinks with pathos—to give soul to novels about novels. The journalism shows him as practitioner of metafiction not merely by trade but by fundamental inclination. The implicit premise of his reporting is that reporting the stories behind and around and beneath the story is an essential part of reporting the story. You could say that he always intruded on these pieces—loudly announcing his methods, coughing just a touch coyly at the process of writing a piece for "a swanky East-Coast magazine," stage-whispering to his editors, and appending his own doubts, anxieties, and second thoughts (of which there were usually plenty) as both a writer and a human.<br />Mailer, striding through Armies of the Night in the third person, was, even at his most unsparingly buffoonish, a royal presence. Wallace's autobiographical <em>I</em>, whether writing about tennis, porn, television, or John McCain, was humble, curious, always on high alert for glinting irony, and consistently ingratiating in practicing a strain of confessionalism that was somehow ego-abasing. The I was frequently to be seen sweating heavily in its nervousness, a condition exacerbated by its frequent worrying about serving the reader by working to get at that most un-Postmodern abstraction: the truth. Naturally, then, the nerves would be part of the article, each "self-indulgent twinge of neurotic projection" emerging as a figure in a sweeping interior landscape. It requires a fair deal of writerly nuance and human understanding to pull off such shenanigans without achieving instant audience alienation. Do not try this at home.<br />That "twinge" line above is from the title piece of Wallace's first essay collection, <em>A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again</em>, an account of a week of strenuous relaxation on a luxury cruise line first published in Harper's in 1996. In its Balzac-like detail and fervent curiosity—Midwestern skepticism gone to Northeastern grad school—the article was an instant classic. It stands as the second work in a trilogy of what you might undersell as travel pieces or exalt as insightful tours into all-American pleasure domes. Two year before, Harper's ran "<em>Getting Away From Pretty Much Being Away From It All</em>," in which the writer, who grew up on the outskirts of Urbana, Ill., went back to Illinois for its state fair and, without condescension, threw new light on what we're doing when we amuse ourselves with such a "self-consciously Special occasion of connection."<br />David Foster Wallace in a 1997 excerpt from The Charlie Rose Show:<br /><embed name="flashObj" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=" src="http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/271557392" width="486" height="412" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashvars="videoId=1799063672&playerId=271557392&viewerSecureGatewayURL=https://console.brightcove.com/services/amfgateway&servicesURL=http://services.brightcove.com/services&cdnURL=http://admin.brightcove.com&domain=embed&autoStart=false&" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" seamlesstabbing="false" swliveconnect="true"></embed><br /><br /><br />In 2004, the editors of Gourmet, doubtlessly expecting another further late-model Tocqueville-izing, sent Wallace to the Maine Lobster Festival. He sent back an essay on "the whole animal-cruelty-and-eating issue" so acute and supple in its consideration of uneasy questions about aesthetics and morality that it ranks as a must-read for anyone even thinking of having dinner. In memorializing a writer who has killed himself, there is an impulse—wholly human and totally ghoulish—to rifle through the work in search of clues and cries and suicide footnotes, and in the case of Wallace, the rifling requires no strain. (Like any smart writer aspiring to greatness, despair was a regular theme, and "A Supposedly Fun Thing …" got some of its considerable energy from the author's association of "the ocean with dread and death." Despair, he wrote, is "wanting to jump overboard.") But if you must dwell on pain and suffering, why not pay the man tribute by <a href="http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster?printable=true" target="_blank">reading the Gourmet essay</a>, the title piece in Consider the Lobster. It's about boiling lobsters. It's about the neurological capacities of crustaceans and the spiraling motions of the human mind. It's not a tract, just an argument guided by a sure sense of "moral duty," and Wallace's achievement was to make thinking about the facts of Postmodern life, and thinking about thinking about them, one of the keenest pleasures of being alive.<a href="mailto:w.troy.patterson@gmail.com" target="_blank">Troy Patterson</a> is Slate's television critic.<br />Article URL: <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2200152/" target="_blank">http://www.slate.com/id/2200152/</a> </div></div>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-72122702888937744622008-08-29T23:19:00.004-04:002008-08-29T23:53:38.552-04:00To Shrink Government So Much We Will Drown It In A Bathtub<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1j9hahvPXojqw2Jeoon7QvKqe0-m7YoannMVYh57CsKnLIjtSgxE1oC1EKrSi-falUPFIFJ8fnp0HQCndzXcnIzkaMhktq__wIKtTvs5RWcNP_ViKCr674er2PM92FnHjEDIIKw/s1600-h/norquist+book.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5240152681321211842" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1j9hahvPXojqw2Jeoon7QvKqe0-m7YoannMVYh57CsKnLIjtSgxE1oC1EKrSi-falUPFIFJ8fnp0HQCndzXcnIzkaMhktq__wIKtTvs5RWcNP_ViKCr674er2PM92FnHjEDIIKw/s400/norquist+book.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><strong>Greg Anrig on Grover Norquist's "Leave Us Alone"</strong><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Conservative policy ideas have failed again and again. Who will tell the Grover?</span><br /><br /><br /><div><br />A 2005 New Yorker profile aptly described Grover G. Norquist as the conservative coalition’s “ringleader, visionary, and enforcer.” As head of the advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform since 1985, Norquist relentlessly pushed disparate factions on the right to cooperate in electing Republicans at all levels of government and in killing the careers of politicians who dodged or broke his signature “no-new-taxes” pledge. Because Norquist’s ascent to power coincided with the conservative movement’s domination of American politics, when he speaks, everyone across the ideological spectrum listens.Norquist wrote his new book, <strong>Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government’s Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives</strong>, to lay out his roadmap for his “Leave us Alone Coalition to continue its progress toward Jefferson’s vision of the self-r<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEvaM2Cyvm9tDBA0QbIAIIP1TcCAGnisxywzWbEtxgrfHGFoLBKwZ6ilFTlGfV-_fR2j1G3zawnD6Fqr-Xuc4dPWQL3Cv22qPI9jYBVEPZo5SG4RWlLiWEVA0s2gT9CwphdfR5pw/s1600-h/norquistp.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5240152214616283986" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEvaM2Cyvm9tDBA0QbIAIIP1TcCAGnisxywzWbEtxgrfHGFoLBKwZ6ilFTlGfV-_fR2j1G3zawnD6Fqr-Xuc4dPWQL3Cv22qPI9jYBVEPZo5SG4RWlLiWEVA0s2gT9CwphdfR5pw/s400/norquistp.jpg" border="0" /></a>eliant, independent American—toward a free society where everyone lives off the earnings of no man but himself.” But with the conservative era apparently on the verge of collapsing in November, Norquist’s book is more illuminating as a resource for understanding why his movement’s resounding political successes ended up producing such catastrophic failures of governance. The belief system built on hostility toward government that motivated Norquist and his followers left the public officials they elected with no effective ways to respond to challenges ranging from Hurricane Katrina to stagnating wages to the downward-spiraling health care system to tainted spinach to global warming and so on. <strong>Drowning government in a bathtub, to use Norquist’s characteristically blunt language, left the residents of New Orleans on their own when Katrina drowned their</strong> city. A large majority of Americans were appalled at what that looked like. Nowhere in his 333 pages of text does Norquist wrestle with the governing failures that knocked down the popularity ratings of President George W. Bush, whom Norquist enthusiastically supported through thick and thin, to historically low levels. Nor does Norquist offer anything other than the same policy ideas that Bush pursued, foremost among them tax cuts and curtailed regulation. Because Norquist’s mission is singularly focused on weakening government’s domestic capabilities, he doesn’t perceive what non-ideologues recognize as obvious failures to be anything other than distractions to be ignored or excused away. Good government still means virtually no government.Sometimes Norquist’s analysis is downright delusional, as when he applauds Bush’s failed proposal to privatize Social Security. He writes: “Bush turned a losing issue for Republicans—Social Security—into a winner. In 2000 and 2004, roughly 50-55 percent of Americans supported reforming Social Security to create personal savings accounts. This was turnaround from 1986 when the Republicans lost eight Senate seats and their Senate majority after discussing ‘reforming’ Social Security by reducing some benefits.” But after Bush proposed his privatization plan in 2005, and the public learned during the course of the debate how, mathematically, it would weaken their retirement security and greatly add to the national debt, support for the idea plummeted. Most other observers across the spectrum recognized that experience as disastrous for Republicans and one of the big reasons why they were clobbered in the 2006 Congressional elections. Norquist is more insightful as a political strategist than as a policy wonk, but even his framework for thinking about coalition-building in its own right illustrates another root cause of his movement’s inability to govern. He argues: “What matters in politics is the one issue that moves a citizen to vote for or against a candidate. The Leave Us Alone Coalition members…find themselves shoulder to shoulder working together for the same candidates and over time the same party because on the issue that moves each of their individual votes—not necessarily all or even most issues—what they want from the government is to be left alone.” Norquist identifies the subgroups of his coalition as focused above all on one of the following: lower taxes, less regulation of their small businesses, gun ownership, home schooling, or property rights. Others strong candidates for his team include “parents of faith who will fight to control what is taught to their children in their schools,” “the growing investor class,” and police, prison guards, the military and other employees of “properly limited government” who “play a role in protecting the life, liberty, and property of citizens.”Early in this decade, Norquist, his close friend Karl Rove, and their movement succeeded in gaining enough votes from that amalgamation of groups to deliver the presid<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjfhLuUfUcW4Bvosul_Tr_41HzrXWN5-7sXAiEeKyoiIx44yNJBbXigUKa11wCqXZwIHfCkaTIW08OB4vnjtBHXyNceOnY387k-aM_O9WBUWbE9YMay4DA9FkxrJFCmQIpt5smeg/s1600-h/Rove-Karl.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5240153722345386626" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" height="90" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjfhLuUfUcW4Bvosul_Tr_41HzrXWN5-7sXAiEeKyoiIx44yNJBbXigUKa11wCqXZwIHfCkaTIW08OB4vnjtBHXyNceOnY387k-aM_O9WBUWbE9YMay4DA9FkxrJFCmQIpt5smeg/s400/Rove-Karl.jpg" width="92" border="0" /></a>ency, the legislative branch, and the leadership of many state governments to Republicans. But what each of those groups and their members wanted, by Norquist’s own account, was nothing more than for government to stay out of some aspect of their lives. Issues that affect all Americans collectively – problems related to the economy, health care, the environment, energy, etc. -- don’t motivate the supporters of conservative politicians. In and of itself, that would help to explain why Republicans in office haven’t done much more than pay lip service to such matters, even though government in the past has succeeded in making progress in addressing precisely those kinds of collective challenges. Just keep talking about the virtues of home schooling, guns, school prayer, low taxes, and so forth, and the Leave Us Alone Coalition will keep on winning, Norquist believes, no matter how many Americans lose their health insurance.At the state level, Norquist and his activists have energetically campaigned across the country for rigid tax-and-spending limits, called the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), like the one that Colorado’s voters approved in a 1992 referendum. Almost entirely because of its TABOR amendment, Colorado was forced to cut billions of dollars that would have financed public services, with the reductions becoming especially severe after the 2001 recession. Colorado – which has the 10th highest median income in the country – saw its national rankings with respect to a wide range of educational and health care measures plummet to the bottom 10 states alongside impoverished Mississippi and Alabama. For example, from 1992 to 2005, the portion of low-income children lacking health insurance doubled in Colorado even as it fell in the nation as a whole – dropping from the top half of the states to dead last. The ratio of teacher salaries to average private sector earnings also plummeted from the middle of the pack to 50th, with teacher shortages so acute that Denver sent letters home with students asking parents to serve as substitutes. In 2004, Colorado’s voters switched both houses of the state General Assembly from a Republican to Democratic majority; in 2005, they voted to suspend TABOR for five years; and the following year they replaced the Republican governor with a Democrat. Undaunted by those results – either the damage to Colorado’s public services or the unfavorable political outcomes – Norquist continues to argue as strenuously as ever that other states should implement TABOR amendments as well.With a similar day of reckoning rapidly approaching in November, Norquist remains emphatic about sticking to precisely the game plan that made him famous and his movement so successful up until now. At a recent discussion of his book, he said that notwithstanding the deep unpopularity of President Bush, “If center-right candidates articulate their positions correctly, they will win 60 percent of the vote just like Reagan did in 1984 and George H.W. Bush plus Perot in 1992.” The Republican presidential nominee John McCain appears to be listening, hewing to much the same domestic tax-cutting, government-slashing agenda that Norquist advocates. But for progressives, the lessons Norquist offers aren’t of the sort that we should try to emulate. Since our whole orientation is to try to make progress in addressing problems confronting society as a whole – to promote the common good -- trying to assemble potential supporters based on which single narrowly defined issue is most important to them undermines how we think about government and each other. Rather, the real value of Norquist’s book is to clarify what we want to defeat: an everyone-for-himself mindset that has caused so much damage to our country. Greg Anrig is vice president of policy at The Century Foundation and the author of <a href="http://progressivebookclub.com/pbc2/viewBook.pbc?id=171">The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing</a><a href="http://progressivebookclub.com/pbc2/viewBook.pbc?id=171">.</a><br /><a href="http://www.progressivebookclub.com/pbc2/viewArticle.pbc?aid=1244#">comments (0)</a> <a href="http://www.progressivebookclub.com/pbc2/createComment.pbc?aid=1244">make a comment</a> </div></div></div>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-60463526884906288292008-08-29T20:28:00.003-04:002008-08-29T21:20:43.934-04:00This is the Week That Was<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDlOKTiG9mYNe9uTCyzGWmIFnheMB90Kv4RH6t1zfhyphenhyphen5WUuB_VnkolD9NbWEDYXTXfrONb3pBELaugqlky3PFe0kJ5kfWHi7TvbszBzrc5vP9iyOmrhvK2xfLJUSvLVXAqX9Eu_w/s1600-h/Al-Gore-ait03.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5240101414896462482" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDlOKTiG9mYNe9uTCyzGWmIFnheMB90Kv4RH6t1zfhyphenhyphen5WUuB_VnkolD9NbWEDYXTXfrONb3pBELaugqlky3PFe0kJ5kfWHi7TvbszBzrc5vP9iyOmrhvK2xfLJUSvLVXAqX9Eu_w/s400/Al-Gore-ait03.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">AL GORE Speaks out at the DNC....Oh, how eight years can change our perspectives!</span></strong><br /><br /><em>August is Midsummer, at least in the southern climes of the Florida Keys. The month began on the heels of Hemingway Days, and Mel Fisher Days, and led right into the exhilarating Midsummer's Night Dream Salon Spectacle, held August 12th. Over 400 people joined in the celebration. Truly a Night to remember, as locals and over 60 artists made the night the highlight of the summer thus far. But the real heat of summer was to be found at the Democratic National Convention held in Denver this past week has really been not just a Mile High affair, but a watershed moment of political history. Barack Obama is the nominee, and Joe Biden as his running mate, with over 38 million people watching on the TV networks (and not even counting web or C-Span, which is where I watched it as I wanted to avoid the talking head histrionics). This is 20 million MORE than watched John Kerry accept his nomination in 2004. More than the Oscars, More than the opening ceremony for the Olympics in China. And even (shocking!) more than who watch American Idol! To be expected, much of the stagecraft is from central casting, full of pithy cliches, and fealty to a set of "values" espoused to ensure the party is unified, despite the acrimonious path to the final crown.<br /><br />But I feverishly watched some of the so-called lesser lights, the minor leaguers, and even the hacks and pols who get their chance at history with a 5 minute speech, the state or local office-holders who are passionate about their concerns, the precinct captains from all over the great 50 states, union stalwarts, teachers, cops, the usual big tent the Democrats revel in, the diverse polyglot that make up the Democratic Party.<br />For a political junkie like me, who cut his teeth and bled on the alter of the Chicago 1968 convention, each quadrennial convention is a true exercise in bringing to focus the national identity, warts and all. The stagecraft is right from central casting, the usual bromides and blathering unabated - the best was when Barney Smith (a real person, who looked like, well, a Mid-western corn-fed Barney Fife), in his own reduced 5 minutes of fame, asserted the Bush gang had deserted him, for Smith Barney (of Wall Street ignomy).<br />But I wanted to hear Al Gore speak, the man who of course WAS elected President in 2000, only to have a coup, executed by the handmaidens of the Supreme Court wrest it from him. Here is his speech. Read and you cannot help but feel how history has been robbed, even raped by cycnical, corrupt, and evil people - Bush and his gang of neo-con enablers. The future now is in our hands once again, as an act of true faith, not in the sanctity of a religious church, but of the American experiment in this noble thing we call democracy. Of course, we can also be cynical and say our vote doesn't matter. Or, that Obama isn't enough of this or that, a centrist, even, or just another patsy for the true lords of our culture, whether they be bankers, brokers, or barons of industy. But, Al Gore, who I had the distinct pleasure of meeting at the Sundance Film Festival when he was premiering his award-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, had a lot to say in his extended comments prior to Obama coming onstage to accept the nomination. Here is the transcript: - MS<br /></em>***<br />One of the greatest gifts of our democracy is the opportunity it offers us every four years to change course.<br />It's not a guarantee – it's only an opportunity.<br />The question facing us is, simply put, will we seize this opportunity for change?<br />That's why I came here tonight: to tell you why I feel so strongly that we must seize this opportunity to elect Barack Obama President of the United States.<br />Eight years ago, some said there was not much difference between the nominees of the two major parties and it didn't really matter who became President.<br />Our nation was enjoying peace and prosperity. Some assumed we would continue both no matter the outcome. But here we all are in 2008, and I doubt anyone would argue now that election didn't matter.<br />Take it from me, if it had ended differently, we would not be bogged down in Iraq, we would have pursued Bin Laden until we captured him.<br />We would not be facing a self-inflicted economic crisis, we would be fighting for middle income families.<br />We would not be showing contempt for the Constitution, we'd be protecting the rights of every American regardless of race, religion, disability, gender or sexual orientation.<br />And we would not be denying the climate crisis, we'd be solving it.<br />Today, we face essentially the same choice we faced in 2000, though it may be even more obvious now – because John McCain, a man who has earned our respect on many levels, is now openly endorsing the policies of the Bush-Cheney White House and promising to actually continue them, the same policies all over again?<br />Hey, I believe in recycling, but that's ridiculous.<br />With John McCain's support, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have led our nation into one calamity after another because of their indifference to fact; their readiness to sacrifice the long-term to the short-term, subordinate the general good to the benefit of the few, and short-circuit the rule of law.<br />If you like the Bush/Cheney approach, John McCain's your man. If you want change, t<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3OEph1z1trr9EXJFLvF2mRVrkx3BTlq6pI2caTnnzGSiG_ozf7J9eHFS9H7VDSod8-br3a5jZbMvAJ7kFxzU_JinZ0cvzJX2HdJ9Pat3kYDJ-Bmh9sOUynhBAUbYxtVtV48gttw/s1600-h/mccain-orleans-cake-bush.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5240114320069085602" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3OEph1z1trr9EXJFLvF2mRVrkx3BTlq6pI2caTnnzGSiG_ozf7J9eHFS9H7VDSod8-br3a5jZbMvAJ7kFxzU_JinZ0cvzJX2HdJ9Pat3kYDJ-Bmh9sOUynhBAUbYxtVtV48gttw/s400/mccain-orleans-cake-bush.jpg" border="0" /></a>hen vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.<br />Barack Obama is telling us exactly what he will do: launch a bold new economic plan to restore America's greatness. Fight for smarter government that trusts the market, but protects us against its excesses. Enact policies that are pro-choice, pro-education, and pro-family. Establish a foreign policy that is smart as well as strong. Provide health care for all and solutions for the climate crisis.<br />So why is this election so close?<br />Well, I know something about close elections, so let me offer you my opinion.<br />I believe this election is close today mainly because the forces of the status quo are desperately afraid of the change Barack Obama represents.<br />There is no better example than the climate crisis. As I have said for many years throughout this land, we're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the future of human civilization. Every bit of that has to change.<br />Oil company profits have soared to record levels, gasoline prices have gone through the roof and we are more dependent than ever on dirty and dangerous fossil fuels. Many scientists predict that the entire North Polar ice cap may be completely gone during summer months in the first term of the next President. Sea levels are rising, fires are raging, storms are stronger. Military experts warn us our national security is threatened by massive waves of climate refugees destabilizing countries around the world, and scientists tell us the very web of life is endangered by unprecedented extinctions.<br />We are facing a planetary emergency which, if not solved, would exceed anything we've ever experienced in the history of humankind.<br />In spite of John McCain's past record of open mindedness on the climate crisis, he has apparently now allowed his party to browbeat him into abandoning his support of mandatory caps on global warming pollution.<br />And it just so happens that the climate crisis is intertwined with the other two great challenges facing our nation: reviving our economy and strengthening our national security. The solutions to all three require us to end our dependence on carbon-based fuels.<br />Instead of letting lobbyists and polluters control our destiny, we need to invest in American innovation. Almost a hundred years ago, Thomas Edison said, "I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."<br />We already have everything we need to use the sun, the wind, geothermal power, conservation and efficiency to solve the climate crisis – everything, that is, except a president who inspires us to believe, "Yes we can."<br />So how did this no-brainer become a brain-twister?<br />Because the carbon fuels industry – big oil and coal – have a 50-year lease on the Republican Party and they are drilling it for everything it's worth. And this same industry has spent a half a billion dollars this year alone trying to convince the public they are actually solving the problem when they are in fact making it worse every single day.<br />This administration and the special interests who control it lock, stock, and barrel after barrel, have performed this same sleight-of-hand on issue after issue. Some of the best marketers have the worst products; and this is certainly true of today's Republican party.<br />The party itself has on its rolls men and women of great quality. But the last eight years demonstrate that the special interests who have come to control the Republican Party are so powerful that serving them and serving the national well-being are now irreconcilable choices.<br />So what can we do about it?<br />We can carry Barack Obama's message of hope and change to every family in America. And pledge that we will be there for Barack Obama – not only in the heat of this election, but in the aftermath as we put his agenda to work for our country.<br />We can tell Republicans and Independents, as well as Democrats, why our nation needs a change from the approach of Bush, Cheney and McCain.<br />After they wrecked our economy, it is time for a change.<br />After they abandoned the search for the terrorists who attacked us and redeployed the troops to invade a nation that did not attack us, it's time for a change.<br />After they abandoned the American principle first laid down by General George Washington when he prohibited the torture of captives because it would bring, in his words, "shame, disgrace and ruin" to our nation, it's time for a change.<br />When as many as three Supreme Court justices could be appointed in the first term of the next president, and John McCain promises to appoint more Scalias and Thomases and end a woman's right to choose, it's time for a change.<br />Many people have been waiting for some sign that our country is ready for such change. How will we know when it's beginning to take hold? I think we might recognize it as a sign of such change if we saw millions of young people getting involved for the first time in the political process.<br />This election is actually not close at all among younger voters – you are responding in unprecedented numbers to Barack Obama's message of change and hope. You recognize that he represents a clean break from the politics of partisanship and bitter division. You understand that the politics of the past are exhausted and you're tired of appeals based on fear. You know that America is capable of better than what you have seen in recent years. You are hungry for a new politics based on bipartisan respect for the ageless principles embodied in the United States Constitution.<br />There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon awakening to the challenge of a present danger, shaking off complacency to rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of embracing change.<br />A century and a half ago, when America faced our greatest trial, the end of one era gave way to the birth of another. The candidate who emerged victorious in that election is now regarded by most historians as our greatest president.<br />Before he entered the White House, Abraham Lincoln's experience in elective office consisted of eight years in his state legislature in Springfield, Illinois and one term in Congress – during which he showed the courage and wisdom to oppose the invasion of another country that was popular when it started but later condemned by history.<br />The experience Lincoln's supporters valued most in that race was his powerful ability to inspire hope in the future at a time of impasse. He was known chiefly as a clear thinker and a great orator with a passion for justice and a determination to heal the deep divisions of our land. He insisted on reaching past partisan and regional divides to exalt our common humanity.<br />In 2008, once again, we find ourselves at the end of an era with a mandate from history to launch another new beginning. And once again, we have a candidate whose experience perfectly matches an extraordinary moment of transition.<br />Barack Obama had the experience and wisdom to oppose a popular war based on faulty premises. His leadership experience has given him a unique capacity to inspire hope in the promise of the American dream of a boundless future.<br />His experience has also given him genuine respect for different views and humility in the face of complex realities that cannot be squeezed into the narrow compartments of ideology. His experience has taught him something that career politicians often overlook: that inconvenient truths must be acknowledged if we are to have wise governance.<br />The extraordinary strength of his personal character – and that of his wonderful wife, Michelle – are grounded in the strengths of the American community. His vision and his voice represent the best of America. His life experience embodies the essence of our motto -- e pluribus unum -- out of many, one.<br />That is the linking identity at the other end of all the hyphens that pervade our modern political culture. It is that common American identity – which Barack Obama exemplifies, heart and soul -- that enables us as Americans to speak with moral authority to all of the peoples of the world to inspire hope that we as human beings can transcend our limitations to redeem the promise of human freedom.<br />Late this evening, our convention will end with a benediction. As we bow in reverence, remember the words of the old proverb: "when you pray, move your feet."<br />Then let us leave here tonight and take the message of hope from Denver to every corner of our land and do everything we can to serve our nation, our world -- and most importantly, our children and their future -- by electing Barack Obama President of the United States.</div>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-11082092072643792742008-08-17T17:57:00.008-04:002008-08-17T18:40:02.402-04:00The Candidate We Still Don't Know<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiurKxywYTcO7FuGDLGH2BikNjAYCW2ce5bxnH3soAxzOHscVU13Q4mXOUJMFMzB1Xdm-zFkg7PV-fLG131Qw-iOfH-fsQyE8iyVTGZlfo1iJTMvTr3IxpUZL_yS61dudYcQUGhcg/s1600-h/McCain+at+forum+of+faith.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5235610883283353218" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiurKxywYTcO7FuGDLGH2BikNjAYCW2ce5bxnH3soAxzOHscVU13Q4mXOUJMFMzB1Xdm-zFkg7PV-fLG131Qw-iOfH-fsQyE8iyVTGZlfo1iJTMvTr3IxpUZL_yS61dudYcQUGhcg/s400/McCain+at+forum+of+faith.jpg" border="0" /></a> Frank Rich, The New York Times<br /><br />As I went on vacation at the end of July, Barack Obama was <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html" target="_blank">leading</a> John McCain by three to four percentage points in national polls. When I returned last week he still was. But lo and behold, a whole new plot twist had rolled off the bloviation assembly line in those intervening two weeks: Obama had lost the election! (<em><span style="font-size:85%;">John McCain during a commercial break at the forum on faith. (Photo: David McNew / Getty Images)</span></em> <div><div><div><div><br /><div><span style="font-size:100%;">The poor guy should be winning in a landslide against the despised party of Bush-Cheney, and he's not. He should be passing the 50 percent mark in polls, and he's not. He's been done in by that ad with Britney and Paris and by a new international crisis that allows McCain to again flex his Manchurian Candidate military cred. Let the neocons identify a new battleground for igniting World War III, whether Baghdad or Tehran or Moscow, and McCain gets with the program as if Angela Lansbury has just dealt him the Queen of Hearts. </span></div><div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi87CJxZIjXTlwWj1K7p_hv00NqdvpSi1wTF7vLs90RpSfqYXbox5YnPY7Qebq7iTMSB6IiQ7O3pqPVE-5xoQZKbN5HM1nVGw5vAxicnk4dyDpMJBudH4VgiOj6j3FETTOycnx7zA/s1600-h/obama.jpg"><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5235611426082503090" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi87CJxZIjXTlwWj1K7p_hv00NqdvpSi1wTF7vLs90RpSfqYXbox5YnPY7Qebq7iTMSB6IiQ7O3pqPVE-5xoQZKbN5HM1nVGw5vAxicnk4dyDpMJBudH4VgiOj6j3FETTOycnx7zA/s400/obama.jpg" border="0" /></strong></span></a><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Obama</strong></span> has also been defeated by racism (again). He can't connect and 'close the deal' with ordinary Americans too doltish to comprehend a multicultural biography that includes what Cokie Roberts of ABC News has <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/207883.php" target="_blank">damned</a> as the 'foreign, exotic place' of Hawaii. As The Economist <a href="http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11848408" target="_blank">sums up</a> the received wisdom, 'lunch-pail Ohio Democrats' find Obama's ideas of change 'airy-fairy' and are all asking, 'Who on earth is this guy?'<br />It seems almost churlish to look at some actual facts. No presidential candidate was breaking the 50 percent mark in mid-August polls in 2004 or 2000. Obama's average lead of three to four points is marginally larger than both John Kerry's and Al Gore's leads then (each was winning by one point in <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/polls/2004-08-26-usat-poll_x.htm" target="_blank">Gallup</a> <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C00E4DE113EF932A1575BC0A9669C8B63" target="_blank">surveys</a>). Obama is also ahead of Ronald Reagan in mid-August 1980 (<a href="http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0D15FE3A5C12728DDDA00994D0405B8084F1D3" target="_blank">40 percent</a> to Jimmy Carter's 46). At <a href="http://www.pollster.com/" target="_blank">Pollster.com</a>, which aggregates polls and gauges the electoral count, Obama as of Friday stood at 284 electoral votes, McCain at 169. That means McCain could win all 85 electoral votes in current toss-up states and still lose the election.<br />Yet surely, we keep hearing, Obama should be running away with the thing. Even Michael Dukakis was beating the first George Bush by <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DEFD7113EF935A15754C0A96E948260" target="_blank">17 percentage points</a> in the summer of 1988. Of course, were Obama ahead by 17 points today, the same prognosticators now fussing over his narrow lead would be predicting that the arrogant and presumptuous Obama was destined to squander that landslide on vacation and tank just like his hapless predecessor.<br />The truth is we have no idea what will happen in November. But for the sake of argument, let's posit that one thread of the Obama-is-doomed scenario is right: His lead should be huge in a year when the G.O.P. is in such disrepute that <a href="http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/08/13/1263992.aspx" target="_blank">at least eight</a> of the party's own senatorial incumbents are skipping their own convention, the fail-safe way to avoid being caught near the Larry Craig Memorial Men's Room at the Twin Cities airport.<br />So why isn't Obama romping? The obvious answer - and both the excessively genteel Obama campaign and a too-compliant press bear responsibility for it - is that the public doesn't know who on earth John McCain is. The most revealing poll this month by far is the <a href="http://people-press.org/report/441/obama-fatigue" target="_blank">Pew Research Center survey</a> finding that 48 percent of Americans feel they're 'hearing too much' about Obama. Pew found that only 26 percent feel that way about McCain, and that nearly 4 in 10 Americans feel they hear too little about him. It's past time for that pressing educational need to be met.<br />What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president's response to Katrina; he fought the 'agents of intolerance' of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.<br />With the exception of McCain's imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.<br />McCain<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7Lgij9hmBtHaCMDDzWZtGmO1BLl-Af_JBYQoGvX1aNLc9QLXPf7hd5eNwS-mktcdjnlcaakYYtBnmvzBPDwpAQrtsHWAgrBh620_e67Uqyj3olzP-Gm0lDR1n4h5RrNeD6G7kgw/s1600-h/Rumsfeld-Donald.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5235612294004430066" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7Lgij9hmBtHaCMDDzWZtGmO1BLl-Af_JBYQoGvX1aNLc9QLXPf7hd5eNwS-mktcdjnlcaakYYtBnmvzBPDwpAQrtsHWAgrBh620_e67Uqyj3olzP-Gm0lDR1n4h5RrNeD6G7kgw/s400/Rumsfeld-Donald.jpg" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/15/AR2008021503320.html" target="_blank">never called</a> for <strong>Donald Rumsfeld</strong> to be fired and didn't start criticizing the war plan until <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/01/17/mccain/" target="_blank">late August 2003</a>, nearly four months after 'Mission Accomplished.' By then the growing insurgency was undeniable. On the day Hurricane Katrina hit, McCain <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/133551" target="_blank">laughed it up</a> with the oblivious president at a birthday photo-op in Arizona<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEissztMAZHYOz2z6SsbqtvdKC3Y24qflH-WHRUweRRGgRuk_eAzomCvJwDkjZJmccO9_W4lWlqVFJPANtrfYYOKFoMnKB0bZmBqKGQKlo3xPQUlIohe74S9_RuFPQr8xz62eAFK8w/s1600-h/mccain-orleans-cake-bush.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5235613401048860226" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEissztMAZHYOz2z6SsbqtvdKC3Y24qflH-WHRUweRRGgRuk_eAzomCvJwDkjZJmccO9_W4lWlqVFJPANtrfYYOKFoMnKB0bZmBqKGQKlo3xPQUlIohe74S9_RuFPQr8xz62eAFK8w/s400/mccain-orleans-cake-bush.jpg" border="0" /></a>. McCain didn't get to New Orleans for <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/30/how-mccains-katrina-recor_n_104176.html" target="_blank">another six months</a> and didn't sharply express public criticism of the Bush response to the calamity until this April, when he traveled to the Gulf Coast in desperate search of election-year pageantry surrounding him with black extras.<br />McCain long ago embraced the right's agents of intolerance, even spending months courting the Rev. John Hagee, whose fringe views about <a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/28/donohue/" target="_blank">Roman Catholics</a> and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/21/mccain-backer-hagee-said_n_102892.html" target="_blank">the Holocaust</a> were known to anyone who can use the Internet. (Once the McCain campaign discovered YouTube, it <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/22/mccain-reverses-himself-to-reject-hagees-support/" target="_blank">ditched</a> Hagee.) </div><br /><div>On Monday McCain is scheduled to appear at an Atlanta fund-raiser being <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/08/13/john-mccain-and-ralph-reed-together-again/" target="_blank">promoted by Ralph Reed</a>, who is not only the former aide de camp to one of the agents of intol<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhwtIEY79lnzXLeB2j-cNjwB162zjASuCM6dmuIT_jxBRGwnncSTLrnC6zdZma-vRmN4v7c1HooCxvOxmj7jvbEnW6kaqjUlN-n80ADNUk-PDYlke4bNqn4G5k4bqk6vUl6R69Fw/s1600-h/Ralph+Reed.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5235614277895470946" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" height="153" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhwtIEY79lnzXLeB2j-cNjwB162zjASuCM6dmuIT_jxBRGwnncSTLrnC6zdZma-vRmN4v7c1HooCxvOxmj7jvbEnW6kaqjUlN-n80ADNUk-PDYlke4bNqn4G5k4bqk6vUl6R69Fw/s400/Ralph+Reed.jpg" width="222" border="0" /></a>erance McCain once vilified (Pat Robertson) but is also the former Abramoff acolyte showcased in McCain's own Senate investigation of Indian casino lobbying.<br />Though the McCain campaign <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/us/politics/20mccain.html" target="_blank">announced</a> <a href="http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/mccain_campaign_to_revet_entir.php" target="_blank">a new no-lobbyists policy</a> three months after The Washington Post's <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/21/AR2008022101131.html" target="_blank">February report</a> that lobbyists were 'essentially running' the whole operation, the fact remains that McCain's top officials and fund-raisers have past financial ties to nearly every domestic and foreign flashpoint, from <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/us/politics/27lobby.html" target="_blank">Fannie Mae</a> to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/us/politics/13black.html" target="_blank">Blackwater</a> to <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080421/roston" target="_blank">Ahmad Chalabi</a> to the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/12/AR2008081202932.html" target="_blank">government of Georgia</a>. No sooner does McCain flip-flop on oil drilling than a <a href="http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/oil_company_executives.php" target="_blank">bevy of Hess Oil family members and executives</a>, not to mention a lowly <a href="http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/hess_corporation_office_manage.php" target="_blank">Hess office manager and his wife</a>, each give a maximum $28,500 to the Republican Party.<br />While reporters at The Post and The New York Times have been vetting McCain, many others give him a free pass. Their default cliché is to present him as the Old Faithful everyone already knows. They routinely salute his 'independence,' his 'maverick image' and his 'renegade reputation' - as the hackneyed script was <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121867218820238903.html" target="_blank">reiterated</a> by Karl Rove in a Wall Street Journal op-ed column last week. At Talking Points Memo, the essential blog vigilantly pursuing the McCain revelations often ignored elsewhere, Josh Marshall accurately observes that the Republican candidate is 'graded on a curve.'<br />Most Americans still don't know, as Marshall <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/206947.php" target="_blank">writes</a>, that on the campaign trail 'McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries' names wrong, forgets things he's said only hours or days before and is frequently <a href="http://tpmtv.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/tpmtv_dazed_and_confused.php" target="_blank">just confused</a>.' Most Americans still don't know it is precisely for this reason that the McCain campaign has now <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93360080" target="_blank">shut down</a> the press's previously unfettered access to the candidate on the Straight Talk Express.<br />To appreciate the discrepancy in what we know about McCain and Obama, merely look at the coverage of the potential first ladies. We have heard too much indeed about Michelle Obama's <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8642.html" target="_blank">Princeton thesis</a>, her <a href="http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2006/09/hospital_offici.html" target="_blank">pay raises</a> at the University of Chicago hospital, her<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/us/politics/20wives.html" target="_blank"> statement</a> about being 'proud' of her country and the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/us/politics/18michelle.html" target="_blank">false rumor</a> of a video of her ranting about 'whitey.' <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr98VgZ5rc7CHAABBw6lX9TA0D1MTpI4GZsG78cGh68Lr-psFU14OqIQ7CX3bco6eBGxWlTyFOY8QbfUKMh7wkTr1YXmgnOCK9ueet1KYMAhMKn7n7LjemjYHXPOBUotPVa1v0pw/s1600-h/cindy-mccain-speaks.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5235615787427606978" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" height="246" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr98VgZ5rc7CHAABBw6lX9TA0D1MTpI4GZsG78cGh68Lr-psFU14OqIQ7CX3bco6eBGxWlTyFOY8QbfUKMh7wkTr1YXmgnOCK9ueet1KYMAhMKn7n7LjemjYHXPOBUotPVa1v0pw/s320/cindy-mccain-speaks.jpg" width="279" border="0" /></a>But we still haven't been inside Cindy McCain's <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4922118" target="_blank">tax</a> <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-05-08-cindy-mccain-taxes_N.htm" target="_blank">returns</a>, all her <a href="http://www.jedreport.com/2008/06/the-mccain-resi.html" target="_blank">multiple homes</a> or <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/us/politics/27plane.html" target="_blank">private plane</a>. The Los Angeles Times <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-hensley22-2008jun22,0,4794559.story" target="_blank">reported in June</a> that Hensley & Company, the enormous beer distributorship she controls, 'lobbies regulatory agencies on alcohol issues that involve public health and safety,' in opposition to groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The McCain campaign told The Times that Mrs. McCain's future role in her beer empire won't be revealed before the election.<br />Some of those who know McCain best - Republicans - are tougher on him than the press is. Rita Hauser, who was a Bush financial chairwoman in New York in 2000 and served on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the administration's first term, joined other players in the G.O.P. establishment in <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/obamacans-unite/" target="_blank">forming</a> Republicans for Obama last week. Why? The leadership qualities she admires in Obama - temperament, sustained judgment, the ability to play well with others - are missing in McCain. 'He doesn't listen carefully to people and make reasoned judgments,' Hauser told me. 'If John says ‘I'm going with so and so,' you can't count on that the next morning,' she complained, adding, 'That's not the man we want for president.'<br />McCain has even prompted alarms from the right's own favorite hit man du jour: Jerome Corsi, who Swift-boated John Kerry as co-author of 'Unfit to Command' in 2004 and who is trying to do the same to Obama in his <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/us/politics/13book.html" target="_blank">newly minted best seller</a>, 'The Obama Nation.'<br />Corsi's writings have been repeatedly promoted by Sean Hannity on Fox News; Corsi's publisher, Mary Matalin, has praised her author's 'scholarship.' If Republican warriors like Hannity and Matalin think so highly of Corsi's research into Obama, then perhaps we should take seriously Corsi's scholarship about McCain. In recent articles at <a href="http://worldnetdaily.com/" target="_">worldnetdaily.com</a>, Corsi has claimed (among other charges) that the McCain campaign received 'strong' financial support from a '<a href="http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=57678" target="_blank">group tied to Al Qaeda</a>' and that 'McCain's personal fortune <a href="http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=57354" target="_blank">traces back</a> to organized crime in Arizona.'<br />As everyone says, polls are meaningless in the summers of election years. Especially this year, when there's one candidate whose real story has yet to be fully told. </div></div></div></div></div>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-9698299432403870322008-08-09T15:59:00.002-04:002008-08-09T16:06:59.678-04:00YOU are Invited...to the Midsummer's Night Dream Salon Spectacle<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGKvfqBCJibZ01nnVfUcqVaZLYN2VoRPzueRTD0iJnTKxnGz_S1FO5dUpde4xTSFKJCgtKJbpAZhirHIR3eeOQEKRly9Sf55pZNiQwgkklLjwXELToGQ93yzlkKlqj8SFl24DwBQ/s1600-h/Midsummer's+Postcard+hi+res.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5232611835882914594" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGKvfqBCJibZ01nnVfUcqVaZLYN2VoRPzueRTD0iJnTKxnGz_S1FO5dUpde4xTSFKJCgtKJbpAZhirHIR3eeOQEKRly9Sf55pZNiQwgkklLjwXELToGQ93yzlkKlqj8SFl24DwBQ/s400/Midsummer's+Postcard+hi+res.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-61053212006198959502008-08-08T01:33:00.005-04:002008-08-08T01:44:41.205-04:00Has America become Fascist?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigDAJoudngcZgtPZSoNcncNMQqYnHRybn1P79Uv6AD1L2yWgEa3_RmlsdpaJ69tVTf0FVnJn0gndzb6EvpdzoMPFtiuDbvb_18AfWYl9b7ZIdLiOwwnns9jSBRMsMsRCGcMKLJmw/s1600-h/Bush+and+Cheney+pic.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5232018274853247378" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigDAJoudngcZgtPZSoNcncNMQqYnHRybn1P79Uv6AD1L2yWgEa3_RmlsdpaJ69tVTf0FVnJn0gndzb6EvpdzoMPFtiuDbvb_18AfWYl9b7ZIdLiOwwnns9jSBRMsMsRCGcMKLJmw/s400/Bush+and+Cheney+pic.jpg" border="0" /></a>by Sherwood Ross<br />Global Research, August 1, 2008<br />If it hasn’t gone the way of Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany, it sure is teetering on the brink. America is a nation in deepening crisis, a nation whose leaders repeatedly plunge their citizens into, and make them pay for, serial wars abroad, while stealing their liberties at home. USA has become a country that trashes its citizens (New Orleans), tortures its enemies (Abu Ghraib), threatens other nations with nuclear fire (Iran), flouts international treaties (UN Charter re Iraq), and spies on (FISA), and intimidates, its critics (No Fly). Americans that can clearly see the totalitarian machinations of Vladimir Putin in Russia and Hu Jintao in China are blind to the fascism threatening to envelop them as well.<br />Webster’s defines fascism as “a totalitarian governmental system led by a dictator and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism, militarism, and often racism.” A comparison of 20th century fascist and communist regimes with President Bush’s USA indicates the machinery for a full-blown totalitarian takeover is now in place, even if no coup has occurred. As Naomi Wolf writes in <strong>“<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUX3a9-f7oy0DJYtIr5tMGWmhncMdVle4Pkmw20yCBgGXZtUxkL9T9ZYaebVhcTU-QjAnxFfxXm1Q7cJ9lrXhQxygxUd1XbxY7VU5DqjAIcuPvAhH-0JfBuRVPMrHAYJWNpYf5UQ/s1600-h/end+of+america+by+naomi+wolf.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5232018059522823202" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUX3a9-f7oy0DJYtIr5tMGWmhncMdVle4Pkmw20yCBgGXZtUxkL9T9ZYaebVhcTU-QjAnxFfxXm1Q7cJ9lrXhQxygxUd1XbxY7VU5DqjAIcuPvAhH-0JfBuRVPMrHAYJWNpYf5UQ/s400/end+of+america+by+naomi+wolf.jpg" border="0" /></a>The End of America”</strong> (Chelsea Green) the 2007 Defense Authorization Bill’s Section 333 allows the president “to declare martial law and take charge of the National Guard troops without the permission of a governor when ‘public order’ has been lost…” and to “send the guard into our streets during a public health emergency, terrorist attack or ‘other condition.’”<br />The enabling crowbar was the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It gives the president authority to set up his own system for bringing alien combatants to trial while denying them protection of the Geneva Conventions. “The president and his lawyers now claim the authority to designate any American citizen he chooses as being an ‘enemy combatant,’” Wolf writes of power usurpation that characterized the post-World War One epoch in Europe and Asia.<br />Thus, Congress has empowered Bush just as Germany’s Reichstag empowered Hitler, Wolf writes, recalling Hitler’s boast, “Democracy will be overthrown with the tools of democracy.” Hitler’s Interior Minister issued Clause 2 that gave police the power to hold people in custody indefinitely and without a court order, powers the U.S. Congress today has conferred upon <strong>“The Decider”</strong> in the White House. Mussolini’s used the less grandiose “Il Duce” or “The Leader.”<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicl7XGUSK1No6FTJ8TcRjvGAGBhPg7Q1eONRhw2H7dUEyKTEz1DTHby2bjGFpQmM-XzRWeybsthVh9B0_jtFptaBFLXDtR_v5ym78u9Os4bkL3FHfEyj6TMWAjToCjTlMeN1ENDg/s1600-h/bush_flipping_finger.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5232016808555508082" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 334px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 201px" height="262" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicl7XGUSK1No6FTJ8TcRjvGAGBhPg7Q1eONRhw2H7dUEyKTEz1DTHby2bjGFpQmM-XzRWeybsthVh9B0_jtFptaBFLXDtR_v5ym78u9Os4bkL3FHfEyj6TMWAjToCjTlMeN1ENDg/s400/bush_flipping_finger.jpg" width="372" border="0" /></a>According to Michael Ratner, director of the Center For Constitutional Rights, New York, “the president can…designate people enemy combatants and detain them for whatever reason he wants…there are no charges and prisoners have no lawyers, no family visits, no court reviews, no rights to anything, and no right to release until the mythical end to the ‘war on terror.’”<br />Wolf writes that dictators justify their usurpation of domestic liberties by raising the alarm of “terrorist” threats. Stalin, for example, used this very term in 1934 when he warned his public of a world-wide conspiracy by capitalists to overthrow the Soviet state. If there have been no mass arrests of native-born Americans it is only because the president has not chosen to exercise this authority. If you think it can’t happen to you, recall that in September of 2003 the Army arrested 36-year-old American-born Muslim chaplain James Yee, a West Point graduate, allegedly for “espionage and possibly treason”---but more likely for calling for better conditions for Gitmo inmates. Wolf wrote:<br />“He was blindfolded; his ears were blocked; he was manacled and then put into solitary confinement for 76 days; forbidden mail, television, or anything to read except the Koran. His family was not allowed to visit him. …His lawyers were told he would face execution. (But)Within six months, the U.S. government had dropped all criminal charges against Yee.” Yes, just as it has dropped charges against hundreds of Guantanamo prisoners earlier, men labeled by former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld as “the worst of the worst” but against the overwhelming majority of whom the Bush regime apparently had no case whatever!<br />The treatment Yee got is typical of those who run afoul of the Bush regime: torture first, trial after…if there is a trial. And since his release, Yee has been denied his free speech right to discuss his ordeal---gagged by the Pentagon. Perhaps most incredible, even if a Guantanamo prisoner should be found innocent, the Pentagon says he might not be released anyway. This echoes Stalin’s practice of re-arresting Gulag prisoners after they had done their time. At one point, Stalin had eight million souls behind bars, even exceeding President Bush, currently the world’s Incarcerator-In-Chief.<br />Author Wolf says another danger flag is the creation of paramilitary groups, “aggressive men who have no clear, accountable relationship to the government or the party seeking power…” Mussolini had the blackshirts; Hitler the brownshirts; but whatever their dress, they were thugs. Wolf says that Moycock, N.C.-based Blackwater Worldwide stands ready “to deploy its unaccountable private army (35,000 men) in the U.S.---in the aftermath of natural disasters, and also in cases of ‘national emergency.’” With at least a half billion dollars in government contracts, “Blackwater is the world’s largest private security force, works closely with Halliburton, and is available for action outside the scrutiny of Congress,” Wolf writes. The outfit raked in $73 million for patrolling the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. And Blackwater subcontractor Red Tactica, recruits former Chilean commandos,” men described by one Chilean sociologist that are “valued for their expertise in kidnapping, torturing and killing defenseless civilians,” Wolf wrote.<br />Besides creating such “security” forces, dictators create secret prisons, as Bush has done, ranging from prison ships in the Indian Ocean to dungeons in Poland, where they can hide them from Red Cross scrutiny, as the CIA has done. “We should worry about the men held at Guantanamo because history shows that stripping prisoners of their rights is intoxicating not only to leaders but to functionaries at every level of society,” Wolf writes. “Gitmo” is also an interrogation camp, an operation “that is completely and flatly illegal” and outlawed by the Geneva Conventions in 1949, she points out. Stalin also employed torture and in 1937 actually legalized its use in Soviet prisons. When he received his infamous “albums” with the names of those to be executed and imprisoned, next to some names he often wrote: “Beat! Beat! Beat!” And only months after taking power, Hitler “established a network of illegitimate prisons where torture took place” and where guards could murder inmates with “no chance of being punished,” Wolf said. And like Stalin, The Decider has signaled his henchmen beatings are now the American Way.<br />Dictators hold power by instilling fear in their citizens. Since 2000, Wolf writes there has been “a sharp increase in U.S. citizen groups that are being harassed and infiltrated by police and federal agents, often in illegal ways.” She pointed to a 2006 ACLU report that California police had infiltrated antiwar protests, political rallies, and other constitutionally protected gatherings and were secretly investigating them, even though the California state constitution forbids this. And prior to the 2004 Republican convention in New York, police department detectives infiltrated groups planning peaceful demonstrations. At the Federal level, Bush’s apparatchiks are compiling dossiers on law-abiding citizens. The Defense Department’s Talon program has created a database about peaceful antiwar and other groups and activists. As Jen Nessel of the Center for Constitutional Rights says, “We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model---you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we’re going to hold you.”<br />Bush regime actions’ today recall how the Gestapo, NKVD, Stasi (East German secret police) and Red China’s Politburo “all requisitioned private data such as medical, banking, and library records,” Wolf writes, because access to such private data “breaks down citizens’ sense of being able to act freely against those in power.” And although the Department of Homeland Security’s TIPS scheme to get letter carriers and meter readers, etc., to report suspicious activities was met with derision and never funded, the ACLU noted it was merely absorbed in the Pentagon’s “black budget.”<br />Privacy in America today as guaranteed by the Constitution is fast becoming a memory. The New York Times reported the government in 2005 was monitoring your e-mail and telephone talk without legal warrants and the following year the newspaper disclosed U.S. treasury officials, with CIA help, “were reviewing millions of private bank transactions without individual court-ordered warrants or subpoenas,” Wolf pointed out.<br />One method of intimidation is to limit a citizen’s right to travel freely. The Bush regime has created “watch”(75,000 names) and “no fly”(45,000 names) lists that restrict individuals’ air travel--and those searched and/or stopped from flying can complain all they like because it won’t do them any good. Robert Johnson, an American citizen, Wolf reports, described the humiliation factor of being strip searched when he attempted to board an airplane: “I had to take off my pants. I had to take off my sneakers, then I had to take off my socks. I was treated like a criminal.” This has now become a commonplace ordeal for thousands of Americans. Even at the height of World War Two, such invasions of personal rights would have been unthinkable.<br />Going back to Webster’s definition of fascism, USA today is the world’s runaway leader in “militarism.” Forty-three percent of all U.S. tax dollars in 2007 went to feed the war machine, as the Pentagon believes security depends on operating more than 700 military bases in 130 countries overseas in addition to 1,000 at home. Bush has escalated its budget so that USA now spends nearly as much on arms as all the rest of the world combined. Uncle Sam is also the No. 1 private arms peddler to the world. By contrast, Iran, portrayed by the White House as a menace to the Middle East, has an annual military budget that is 1/100th of the Pentagon’s outlay.<br />Perhaps it would be a good exercise for Americans to read how Hitler emphasized nationalism and militarism. As he wrote in “Mein Kampf”: “Instead of everlasting struggle the world preaches cowardly pacifism, and everlasting peace…There is only one right in this world and this right is one’s own strength.” As for “reconciliation, understanding, world peace, the League of Nations, and international solidarity---we destroy these ideas.” Hitler called for delivering Germans “from the hopeless confusion of international convictions” and educating them “consciously and systematically to fanatical nationalism.” Armed with such views the fascist state thinks nothing of starting an aggressive war based on lies. In 1939, Hitler claimed he was attacked by Poland, igniting World War Two. Bush claimed that Iraq had nuclear and biological weapons to destroy America when, in fact, it was the United States that possessed those very weapons and it was Iraq that had none.<br />Bush nonetheless started a seemingly endless war that has by some estimates to date killed more than 1 million Iraqis, wounded perhaps 2 million more, forced a like number from their homes, ravished their country and its economy, touched off a civil war, forced 1 million Iraqis into foreign exile, and killed and wounded 35,000 American troops. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the Iraq war “illegal” but Bush, like Hitler, cares nothing for international treaties, even if those the U.S. has signed under our Constitution are the supreme law of the land. He has made a mockery to the anti-nuclear treaty, causing former President Carter to charge his own country has become the leader in nuclear proliferation. What’s more, Bush has spent about $50 billion on germ warfare “defense” with no known significant foreign threat to USA.<br />Americans may think that Webster’s view that fascism is often accompanied by racism doesn’t fit them. Indeed, USA’s strides to eliminate racism based on color in the last century are a societal marvel. But racism against African Americans has largely been replaced with the foolhardy notion that Americans are better than everybody else in the world and have the authority to set right any ruler they believe is in error. This view of their own superiority echoes Hitler’s “master race” view of the German people or the Tokyo militarists’ view in 1940 that a superior Japan was destined to rule “the eight corners of the world.” In this sense, America is very “racist” indeed and the “aggressive nationalism” highlighted by Webster’s is apparent in the rhetoric of its public officials and the conduct of its foreign affairs.<br />Yet another characteristic of the fascist state is its leader’s use of arbitrary power. Note how Bush evades the will of Congress by tacking on “signing statements” to laws he doesn’t like, thus refusing to enforce them, putting himself above the will of Congress and the American people. Note how his aides refuse to respond to Congressional subpoenas to testify. Yet another example is how the Justice Department’s own internal investigators found Bush’s appointees filled nonpolitical posts with party hacks and then lied about what they had done. “Civil Service Laws Were Breached in Filling Nonpolitical Jobs” said a New York Times reported July 29th. It should be remembered Hitler followed a like policy when he purged Jews from their government posts. When tyrants rule, merit is ever subservient to loyalty.<br />Of course, Bush has not flung thousands of Americans into prison to torture and murder them as Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin did, but he has the power to do so, making the latter half of 2008 a time of danger for Americans. Wolf writes, “At a point in both Mussolini’s and Hitler’s takeovers, citizens witnessed a stunning series of quickly escalating pronunciamentos or faits accomplis. After each leader made his bids for power beyond what the Italian parliament and the German Reichstag allowed him, each abruptly started to claim all kinds of new rights that were extra-parliamentary; the right unilaterally to go to war, to annex territory, to veto existing laws, or to overrule the judiciary,” etc.<br />To repeat the question, “Is America fascist?” the answer is that the machinery is in place for a totalitarian takeover at the direction of a tyrant. While it is true that the U.S. is not a one-party state (some will dispute this owing to the many similarities of the two major parties) like fascist Italy and Germany, and it does have free elections, for the first time in its history in 2000 and 2004 an ominous cloud of doubt has hung over the authenticity of the popular vote and a vast segment of the voting public today does not trust the election machinery to record their vote as they intend. There are no mass arrests and executions in the thousands and millions that typified the regimes of Hitler and Stalin (Stalin had 681,000 people executed in 1937-8 “Great Terror” alone); free speech still exists (under Stalin, a person could be imprisoned for making a Stalin joke); and the government has not put its leaden hand on business as Putin has done although crony capitalism in the selection of defense contractors is rampant. These vital distinctions set America apart from the totalitarian society. Yet, with each passing day in its “War on Terror” the Bush regime tightens its hold on the machinery to establish totalitarian rule here.<br />Americans need to keep in mind that worse than anything President Bush has inflicted upon its own citizenry is what its wars of aggression have inflicted on innocent humanity abroad. A million dead Iraqis can’t give a damn by what terminology you describe the United States. If the American people allow their government to make criminal wars to deprive innocent foreigners of their lives and liberties they do not deserve to enjoy either at home.<br />Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based writer who has worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News, a columnist for wire services, a news director for a large civil rights organization, and as a publicist for colleges, labor unions and entrepreneurial start-ups. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com Phone: 305-205-8281. The writer is indebted to Naomi Wolf for her book, “The End of America.” Ms. Wolf is cofounder of The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, New York, an organization that teaches young women how to assume leadership roles.)<br />Sherwood Ross is a frequent contributor to Global Research.javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-73004662841303802752008-08-02T13:39:00.006-04:002008-08-02T16:53:40.722-04:00The TRUE State of the US Economy shows 13.7% Unemployment<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYO07vgMXHBFreOkx3soFcg5A9BsP_qID2udrCML2aR9cnUwqC6eZMKP69UFs7TfVlZWq34JrmdqShAitZ6XTViheOCPe05iyT2YE1D7O-W-aTIO_S6tRchG-LjAt5mgc8aPwWtA/s1600-h/Paulson.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230001169428228946" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" height="236" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYO07vgMXHBFreOkx3soFcg5A9BsP_qID2udrCML2aR9cnUwqC6eZMKP69UFs7TfVlZWq34JrmdqShAitZ6XTViheOCPe05iyT2YE1D7O-W-aTIO_S6tRchG-LjAt5mgc8aPwWtA/s400/Paulson.jpg" width="341" border="0" /></a>When <strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Henry Paulson</span></strong> agreed to leave his job as chairman of the powerful Wall Street investment bank, <strong>Goldman Sachs to go to Washington as Treasury Secretary in 2006 he demanded extraordinary powers as de facto economic czar. He got it.</strong> Paulson is also head of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets -- the secretary of the treasury and the chairmen of the Federal Reserve Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Working Group is the financial world's equivalent of the Pentagon war room. <strong>Paulson, not Fed chairman Bernanke, is the person running the Administration’s crisis management.</strong> And his recent actions indicate he has lost control as the snowballing problems from the semi-government mortgage companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to the collapse of the multi-trillion dollar market in Asset Backed Securities (ABS) to the real economy are compounding into the <strong>worst crisis since the 1930’s Great Depression. </strong><strong><br /><div><div><div><br /></strong></div></div></div>‘The US banking system is sound.’In an eerie echo of President Herbert Hoover in 1930, during a Presidential campaign against Roosevelt, following the stock market crash and collapse of numerous smaller banks, Paulson recently appeared on national TV to declare "our banking system is a safe and sound one." He added that the list of "troubled" banks "is a very manageable situation." In fact what he did not say was that the US bank deposit insurance fund, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) <strong>has a list of problem banks that numbers 90</strong>. Not included on that list are banks such as Citigroup, until recently the largest bank in the world.<br />The statement is hardly reassuring. The California savings bank, IndyMac Bank which was declared insolvent a month ago was not on the FDIC list a week before it collapsed. The reality is the crisis created by "securitizing" millions of home mortgages into new financial instruments and selling the packages to pension funds and investors is unfolding like a snowball rolling down the Swiss Alps.<br />Indication of the lack of control is the statement just weeks ago by Paulson that "financial institutions must be allowed to fail." That was two weeks before Paulson went to Congress to ask for "Congressional authority to buy unlimited stakes in and lend to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." As I noted in my recent piece, Financial Tsunami: The Next Big Wave is Breaking: Fannie Mae Freddie Mac and US Mortgage Debt , those two private companies insured some $6 trillion worth of home mortgages, half the entire US mortgage debt. Paulson defended the request by calling Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae "the only functioning part of the home loan market."<br />That comes back to the statement about a "sound banking system". Can we have a sound banking system where the only functioning part is literally insolvent—its debts greater than its assets?<br /><strong>It is well known on Wall Street that some of the largest financial institutions have huge undeclared problems</strong> with Asset Backed Securities they have valued far above their wo<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlGHHY5HjYyc0zrX3kLVK9pGHTOx5KLawUWlqfdRn3RQSHosbc9U-EoINBhzxJhBbiC20IluMOTKSzBCq1oyBaFMVqmlwdIhIRbP3ozhYw8h14ftb4m8UK0BnVQMo4bFqYtByP4Q/s1600-h/citi.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230020772192885458" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlGHHY5HjYyc0zrX3kLVK9pGHTOx5KLawUWlqfdRn3RQSHosbc9U-EoINBhzxJhBbiC20IluMOTKSzBCq1oyBaFMVqmlwdIhIRbP3ozhYw8h14ftb4m8UK0BnVQMo4bFqYtByP4Q/s400/citi.gif" border="0" /></a>rth to make their books look better than they are. The names <strong>Citigroup, Lehman Bros., Morgan Stanley, even Paulson’s old firm, Goldman Sachs and of course the inventor of sub-prime mortgage securitization, Merrill Lynch</strong>, all hold a huge percentage of what are called Level Three assets, these being assets where no one is willing to buy but the bank declares their worth based on "fantasy." In short the value of those core financial institutions of the US financial system is massively overvalued compared with their value were they forced to sell into the open market today. <strong>In a sobering aside, readers should not expect any serious economic remedies for the crisis from a President Barack Obama.</strong> Obama’s National C<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-9b7UOe1O8HnhlOjNp-W56DpTzJuZV1lO0N7mgfa4ikFdKplv_2WytH1EKGvgtKbCP_9UeBrazBgqYFKjrhlwvYcUWvdNCFrUyrntnQaCRCrE9LI4bsbIjhyphenhyphen1uUC-XDoFILB66A/s1600-h/Pritzker.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230022042672683362" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 318px" height="311" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-9b7UOe1O8HnhlOjNp-W56DpTzJuZV1lO0N7mgfa4ikFdKplv_2WytH1EKGvgtKbCP_9UeBrazBgqYFKjrhlwvYcUWvdNCFrUyrntnQaCRCrE9LI4bsbIjhyphenhyphen1uUC-XDoFILB66A/s400/Pritzker.gif" width="199" border="0" /></a>ampaign Finance Chairman is Chicago real estate billionaire, <strong>Penny Pritzker</strong>, who is heir to among other things the Hyatt Hotels. It was Pritzker together with Merrill Lynch ten years ago who first developed the model for securitizing "sub-prime" real estate, the trigger for the current Financial Tsunami crisis. <em>(note: She is also, since 2005, the Chair of TransUnion, the credit reporting agency, and was chair until its collapse of the Chicago based Superior Bank. She has also contributed significantly to the campaigns of Bush 43, Lieberman, Guiliani, Bill Bradley, as well as Gore, Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. And John McCain in 2000. What odd bedfellows money makes. - MS)<br /></em>Already Citigroup has been forced to go to Dubai hat in hand and ask for billions in cash. After it announced it would not need more capital. Now Citigroup just announced plans to sell some $500 billion more assets to raise funds. Is Citigroup really solvent is the question sober investors are asking. Similarly Merrill Lynch raised $6.6 billion from Kuwait Mizuho, stated it was fine and weeks later had to raise still more capital. Morgan Stanley sold a 10% share of the company to China International Corp. <div><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">The real economy is contracting rapidly.<br /></span></strong><em>Behind the reassuring statements from Paulson and others that the "worst is over" the reality of the credit collapse since August 2007 is a deepening economic contraction which I have said several times in this space will surpass the Great Depression of the 1929-1938 period.</em> A good friend who is an unemployed homebuilder in a prosperous part of Arizona just sent me the following list of US department retail store closures. It is worth noting that over 70% of the US GDP is consumer spending and that the entire Federal Reserve strategy of Alan Greenspan after the March 2000 collapse of the stock market bubble, was to bring US interest rates to their lowest levels since the 1930’s in order to stimulate consumer spending on credit, i.e. debt, to avoid "recession." Note the scale of the following store closings across America in recent weeks:<br /><strong>Ann Taylor</strong> closing 117 stores nationwide.<br /><strong>Eddie Bauer</strong> to close more stores after closing 27 stores in the first quarter.<br /><strong>Cache,</strong> a women’s retailer is closing 20 to 23 stores this year.<br /><strong>Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, Catherines</strong> closing 150 stores nationwide<br /><strong>Talbots, J. Jill</strong> closing stores. Talbots will close all 78 of its kids and men's stores plus another 22 underperforming stores. The 22 stores will be a mix of Talbots women's and J. Jill.<br /><strong>Gap</strong> Inc. closing 85 stores<br /><strong>Foot Locker</strong> to close 140 stores<br /><strong>Wickes Furniture</strong> is going out of business and closing all of its stores. The 37-year-old retailer that targets middle-income customers, filed for bankruptcy protection last month.<br /><strong>Levitz</strong> - the furniture retailer, announced it was going out of business and closing all 76 of its stores in December. The retailer dates back to 1910.<br /><strong>Zales, Piercing Pagoda</strong> plans to close 82 stores by July 31 followed by closing another 23 underperforming stores.<br /><strong>Disney Store</strong> owner has the right to close 98 stores.<br /><strong>Home Depot</strong> store closing 15 of them amid a slumping US economy and housing market. The move will affect 1,300 employees. It is the first time the world's largest home improvement store chain has ever closed a flagship store.<br /><strong>CompUSA</strong> (CLOSED).<br /><strong>Macy's</strong> - 9 stores closed<br /><strong>Movie Gallery</strong> – video rental company plans to close 400 of 3,500 Movie Gallery<br />and <strong>Hollywood Video</strong> stores in addition to the 520 locations the video rental<br />chain closed last fall as part of bankruptcy.<br /><strong>Pacific Sunwear</strong> - 153 Demo stores closing<br /><strong>Pep Boys</strong> - 33 stores of auto parts supplier closing<br /><strong>Sprint Nextel</strong> - 125 retail locations to close with 4,000 employees following 5,000 layoffs last year.<br /><strong>J. C. Penney, Lowe's and Office Depot</strong> are all scaling back<br /><strong>Ethan Allen Interiors</strong>: plans to close 12 of 300 stores to cut costs.<br /><strong>Wilsons the Leather Experts</strong> – closing 158 stores<br /><strong>Bombay Company</strong>: to close all 384 U.S.-based Bombay Company stores.<br /><strong>KB Toys</strong> closing 356 stores around the United States as part of its bankruptcy reorganization.<br /><strong>Dillard's Inc.</strong> will close another six stores this year.<br />For anyone familiar with American shopping malls and retailing, this represents a staggering part of the daily economic life of the nation, from furniture stores to clothing to video rentals to leather. The process has only begun and neither major party Presidential candidate has dared to mention this on the ground economic reality, because they evidently have no solutions to offer that would not jeopardize their campaign finances. Obama is tied to not only Pritzker but also to Omaha billionaire, Warren Buffett and George Soros. McCain depends on the traditional money contributions of the Republican Party which demand permanent tax reform for highest income earners and a pro-bank laissez faire treatment of millions of homeowners facing home foreclosure and asset seizure by banks.<br />Banks across the country have severely cut back on loans, fearful of bad debts. That has aggravated the consumer collapse documented above. Hundreds of thousands of real estate brokers, small and large bankers, furniture workers and salespeople, and construction workers are unable to find work. Jobs are being cut wholesale and those working are often on reduced hours. Car sales in June plunged by 28% for Ford, 18% for General Motors and even 21% for Toyota which will mean more layoffs in coming weeks. This will be the next wave of unemployment.<br />The economic reality is not reflected in official US Commerce Department or Labor Department statistics. There the data is constantly being "revised" to hide the grim reality in an election year.<br />My good friend, economist John Williams of California, has meticulously tracked such "data revisions" for more than 25 years and found the manipulation of reality so alarming that he founded an independent subscriber service titled "Shadow Government Statistics" (<a href="http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001HSrUDSXVr3VVGWoRuFs5TgRle-1huZusQDyFKh1XBzIX8WZNRB-D1yRUR1r78KUxhbiMsSoBIGB_hJj1rpBU27uR17L99GgjQhJFqpEsMej9jDGaZT9IgQ==" shape="rect">http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001HSrUDSXVr3VVGWoRuFs5TgRle-1huZusQDyFKh1XBzIX8WZNRB-D1yRUR1r78KUxhbiMsSoBIGB_hJj1rpBU27uR17L99GgjQhJFqpEsMej9jDGaZT9IgQ==</a> ), where he makes best estimate calculations of the reality not the official mythology.<br /><strong>By Williams’ calculations the US economy first entered recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, at the end of 2006.</strong> Ever since, the recession has deepened, dramatically so in the past 12 months. Little known is the fact that the Labor Department also publishes six different unemployment statistics from U1, U2 through to U6 being the most comprehensive. The reported "official unemployment" is the very narrowly defined U3 which stands at 5.5%. However, as Williams notes, <strong>U6 is the real measure and that officially shows 9.7% unemployed. His calculations put the figure at 13.7% actually unemployed and seeking work.<br /></strong>A personal account<br />The unemployed homebuilder from Arizona I mentioned above recently sent me the following personal note on the situation: "Here is how it looks to people like me: Real estate dealings fuelled the economy in most areas of the country for the past decade or more. We’ve been in a market downturn for three years. We have seen the cost of doing business increase for builders, along with a big drop in buyers as everyone tightens their belts, or can’t sell existing homes. Many employers have gone under ending thousands of jobs. If they have a job people are worried about losing it. Driving long distances to work is not possible with gasoline costs double that of 2006. There has been a 40% drop in most peoples’ home equity worth. Many people are "underwater" on their homes, meaning they owe more than the market price is worth today. So many under-employed don’t show up in government unemployed statistics. Self employed like me never get counted."<br />The Arizona homebuilder continued, "Today nobody is building. Unsold home inventories are triple that of 2003. Banks no longer give easy credit for home buyers. Many realtors I know have gone two years without selling a home. Empty storefronts are becoming common. In many areas unemployment among construction trades people is 50% or more. Tens of thousands of illegal Mexicans who did most of the manual labor have returned to Mexico to find work. What now? Well, I do handyman projects of all sorts, big or small and make about 70-90% of what it takes to survive with a family of a wife and three young children. My savings make up the rest. That can’t go on for too much longer. We went from affluent and comfortable to nervous and broke with diminished opportunities in just three years. We used to be the middle class." </div><div><br /><strong>To be continued.</strong> F. William Engdahl is author of<strong><em> A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order</em></strong> (Pluto Press) and Seeds <em><strong>of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation</strong></em> (<a href="http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001HSrUDSXVr3Wyn6DAIp9OpkzLhAITj4uuY0-r0EpmekY9cCZuAAfbRbgXEtt7k0HXs6ZHym_1g0f6450042lr-AhW8vEGQ9Pm9lCeXnxMLTa_uL6CC-Hd0_AhRK7Jx3bs" shape="rect">http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001HSrUDSXVr3Wyn6DAIp9OpkzLhAITj4uuY0-r0EpmekY9cCZuAAfbRbgXEtt7k0HXs6ZHym_1g0f6450042lr-AhW8vEGQ9Pm9lCeXnxMLTa_uL6CC-Hd0_AhRK7Jx3bs</a>). He is at work on a new book, from which this has been adapted, <strong><em>Power of Money: The Rise and Decline of the American Century</em></strong>. He may be reached through his website, <a href="http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001HSrUDSXVr3UgLNhQvy0ybISPRix9DnV0F9figjBmZjvUYycvVNrMeKM8LiCrp3X1gcGL1sioD5VOETp40NGrORtKKu7K_Aa829E7xKDB5Yo6yJCUqrq6IDuOzB18nzCL9ZGZFshLOwo=" shape="rect">http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001HSrUDSXVr3UgLNhQvy0ybISPRix9DnV0F9figjBmZjvUYycvVNrMeKM8LiCrp3X1gcGL1sioD5VOETp40NGrORtKKu7K_Aa829E7xKDB5Yo6yJCUqrq6IDuOzB18nzCL9ZGZFshLOwo=</a>.</div>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-57866056341541637032008-07-30T23:35:00.010-04:002008-08-09T13:12:31.230-04:00How Should the Next President Deal with the Bush White House's Crimes?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFPx2PjGHmnXvsWfZIdmIY5YR1cYq30VKZ9I4rJVdbOS1Lf59ok9LsH4oMSojNXYjdd40lNcZGtHouiVX9udec_J5TWbKUzHUJwBN4dNN3md2jGgyf511-SILRi4BVJ8efzb95EA/s1600-h/Amy+Goodman.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5232566556893433906" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 203px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 196px" height="261" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFPx2PjGHmnXvsWfZIdmIY5YR1cYq30VKZ9I4rJVdbOS1Lf59ok9LsH4oMSojNXYjdd40lNcZGtHouiVX9udec_J5TWbKUzHUJwBN4dNN3md2jGgyf511-SILRi4BVJ8efzb95EA/s400/Amy+Goodman.jpg" width="257" border="0" /></a> Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!<br /><div><div><div><div><div><div><br /><div><strong>Amy Goodman:</strong>The dominant role of corporations is one of a number of issues fueling skepticism around the 2008 campaign. Criticism has also mounted recently over presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama's perceived shift to the right.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOXaIJLOVaM7zkJZYtRSqibpHTMdOpp4QwMJT9PozKDaWvPl_a-VvJEKRo6J91-PEaKxYALAHipEuzQFNwSnFyQ-Dt3ajiGIzi-_b8-OC2v7slhIs_pEFm0XkkSwuXyBqL4ElDKg/s1600-h/obama.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229017563364319746" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOXaIJLOVaM7zkJZYtRSqibpHTMdOpp4QwMJT9PozKDaWvPl_a-VvJEKRo6J91-PEaKxYALAHipEuzQFNwSnFyQ-Dt3ajiGIzi-_b8-OC2v7slhIs_pEFm0XkkSwuXyBqL4ElDKg/s400/obama.jpg" border="0" /></a>In an apparent reversal, Obama backed a new bill authorizing the Bush administration's domestic spy program and granting immunity for the telecom companies that took part. He also supported a Supreme Court decision to overturn a D.C. handgun ban. On foreign policy, Obama said he'd be open to revise his pledge to withdraw US troops from Iraq and also called for a major increase to the size of the US occupation of Afghanistan. And like all top Democratic leaders, Obama has refused to support calls for the prosecution of President Bush and top White House officials for war crimes and other<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN37iDra8ZGj9geA-LLqHBXE9DndFwUsj8O_bkdTAkIQedA-iA-TN3pEr7CFoMbT9f1dIDoPa00mecltbanlXqIen3N99xXak_f27rkQ0_007ueAKZSco-9w0CElPZlhmsDhttOQ/s1600-h/greenwald_art.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229018330414428354" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN37iDra8ZGj9geA-LLqHBXE9DndFwUsj8O_bkdTAkIQedA-iA-TN3pEr7CFoMbT9f1dIDoPa00mecltbanlXqIen3N99xXak_f27rkQ0_007ueAKZSco-9w0CElPZlhmsDhttOQ/s400/greenwald_art.gif" border="0" /></a> abuses of power.<br />The criticism of Obama's stances has come as part of a larger debate over whether efforts to hold the Bush administration accountable would jeopardize an ostensibly higher goal of ensuring a Democratic win this November. </div><div><br />I'm joined right now, in addition to <strong>Glenn Greenwald</strong> <em>(r.),</em> who blogs at Salon.com, the legal scholar <strong>Cass Sunstein</strong>, who's an informal adviser to Barack Obama, professor at Harvard University and the University of Chicago Law School. He is co-author of the book <em>Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness</em> and is cited as one of the most-cited legal scholars in the country.<br />Cass Sunstein, your response to those who talk about -- particularly concerned about Barack Obama, for example, shifting on the FISA bill, saying he would filibuster and now actually voting for the bill that granting retroactive immunity to t<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZe5U-nyFITthZuQqQ7T9MX7V0GxOMMA7WLAvA5u0weVIUiqNZMe7dxp0gfFarm_J0bHHqysO_UeO-MaslneGrHaiwx8dfl0kL3IhySqS6W_YReW7nLnq3R_opyCg2xUC2sYATrg/s1600-h/Cass+Sunstein.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229026335022484226" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZe5U-nyFITthZuQqQ7T9MX7V0GxOMMA7WLAvA5u0weVIUiqNZMe7dxp0gfFarm_J0bHHqysO_UeO-MaslneGrHaiwx8dfl0kL3IhySqS6W_YReW7nLnq3R_opyCg2xUC2sYATrg/s400/Cass+Sunstein.jpg" border="0" /></a>he telecoms.<br /><strong>Sunstein:</strong> Yes, I think it's -- this is widely misunderstood. What the bill isn't is basically a bill that -- whose fundamental purpose is to give immunity. It's a bill that creates a range of new safeguards to protect privacy, to ensure judicial supervision, to give a role for the inspector general. So it actually gives privacy and civil liberties a big boost over the previous arrangement.<br />It also does contain an immunity provision, which Senator Obama opposed. He voted for the substitute bill that didn't have that. But he thought that this was a compromise which had safeguards for going forward, which made it worth supporting on balance, compared to the alternative, which was the status quo. So there's been no fundamental switch for him. He's basically concerned with protecting privacy. And this is not his favorite bill, but it's a lot better than what the Bush administration had before, which was close to free reign.<br /><strong>Goodman:</strong> Glenn Greenwald, you've written a lot about this, as well.<br /><strong>Greenwald:</strong> Well, you know, it's one thing to defend Senator Obama and to support his candidacy, as I do. It's another thing to just make factually false claims in order to justify or rationalize anything that he does.<br />The idea that this wasn't a reversal is just insultingly false. Back in December, Senator Obama was asked, "What is your position on Senator Dodd's pledge to filibuster a bill that contains retroactive immunity?" And at first, Senator Obama issued an equivocal statement, and there were demands that he issue a clearer statement. His campaign spokesman said -- and I quote -- "Senator Obama will support a filibuster of any bill that contains retroactive immunity" -- "any bill that contains retroactive immunity." The bill before the Senate two weeks ago contained retroactive immunity, by everybody's account, and yet not only did Senator Obama not adhere to his pledge to support a filibuster of that bill, he voted for closure on the bill, which is the opposite of a filibuster. It's what enables a vote to occur. And then he voted for the underlying bill itself. So it's a complete betrayal of the very unequivocal commitment that he made not more than six months ago in response to people who wanted to know his position on this issue in order to decide whether or not to vote for him. That's number one.<br />Number two, the idea that this bill is an improvement on civil liberties is equally insulting in terms of how false it is. This is a bill demanded by George Bush and Dick Cheney and opposed by civil libert<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ2BXRxDhXWOQe3OgEXsGXhTBGTUjPjXSRYNC4FVcGZYz07_FQJusAqNA5ugYIWYucrBM18JSLpSVAJTm5zEgN8cJAurd-EVuKq07xnIsugMVv_D7dSsTivDrNIGa_IJUBIxmjNA/s1600-h/dodd.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5232562020283922322" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ2BXRxDhXWOQe3OgEXsGXhTBGTUjPjXSRYNC4FVcGZYz07_FQJusAqNA5ugYIWYucrBM18JSLpSVAJTm5zEgN8cJAurd-EVuKq07xnIsugMVv_D7dSsTivDrNIGa_IJUBIxmjNA/s400/dodd.jpg" border="0" /></a>arians across the board. ACLU is suing. The EFF is vigorously opposed. Russ Feingold and <strong>Chris Dodd</strong>, the civil libertarians in the Senate, are vehemently opposed to it; they say it's an evisceration of the Fourth Amendment. The idea that George Bush and Dick Cheney would demand a bill that's an improvement on civil liberties and judicial oversight is just absurd. This bill vests vast new categories of illegal and/or unconstitutional and warrantless surveillance powers in the President to spy on Americans' communications without warrants. If you want to say that that's necessary for the terrorist threat, one should say that. But to say that it's an improvement on civil liberties is just propaganda.<br /><strong>Goodman:</strong> Cass Sunstein?<br /><strong>Sunstein:</strong> Well, I appreciate the passion behind that statement. I don't see it that way. And Morton Halperin, who's been one of the most aggressive advocates of privacy protections in the last decades, is an enthusiastic supporter of this bill on exactly the ground that I gave. My reading of it, just as a legal matter, is that it ensures exclusivity of the FISA procedure, which the Bush administration strongly resisted, it creates supervision both on the part of the inspector general and the legal system, which the Bush administration had said did not exist previously. So the view that this is an improvement over the Bush administration status quo, I believe, is widely accepted by those who have studied the bill with care.<br />I do appreciate the concern about retroactive immunity. Senator Obama did oppose that, voted for the opposing bill. But I don't share the extreme negativity about this compromise that the speaker endorses.<br /><strong>Goodman</strong>: Glenn Greenwald?<br /><strong>Greenwald:</strong> Well, again, Senator Obama made a promise and then betrayed it. The idea that the bill is an improvement on civil liberties, like I said, is demonstrated by the fact that all civil libertarians, virtually across the board, vigorously oppose it and are suing over it. And I think --<br /><strong>Goodman</strong>: Glenn Greenwald, let me move on to another issue, and that is the issue of holding Bush administration officials accountable. This is also an issue, Professor Sunstein, that you addressed this weekend in Austin at the Netroots Nation conference. And on Friday, the House <strong>Judiciary Chair John Conyers</strong> is going to be holding a hearing around the issue of impeachment, with those for and against impeachment speaking through the day. Your assessment of the whole movement and your thoughts on this, Cass Sunstein?<br /><strong>Sunstein</strong>: Well, I speak just for myself and not for Senator Obama on this, but my view is that impeachment is a remedy of last resort, that the consequences of an impeachment process, a serious one now, would be to divide the country in a way that is probably not very helpful. It would result in the presidency of Vice President Cheney, which many people enthusiastic about impeachment probably aren't that excited about. I think it has an understandable motivation, but I don't think it's appropriate at this stage to attempt to impeach two presidents consecutively.<br />In terms of holding Bush administration officials accountable for illegality, any crime has to be taken quite seriously. We want to make sure there's a process for investigating and opening up past wrongdoing in a way that doesn't even have the appearance of partisan retribution. So I'm sure an Obama administration will be very careful both not to turn a blind eye to illegality in the past and to institute a process that has guarantees of independence, so that there isn't a sense of the kind of retribution we've seen at some points in the last decade or two that's not healthy.<br /><strong>Goodman:</strong> I recently spoke to Democratic Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who's<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg1xOLW4oPtmrjouNsHznprJuuPDzqT9JT2zhHyFlG3ml80FBpDEGEoGnpNlUDiXeUwkDjgepBaH-grhr1VWG4krvucW3-6UfufC1lmyCVwJsOWJXUWbZmoRF8fH1yncARzQ9trQ/s1600-h/Feingold.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5232561446843387522" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg1xOLW4oPtmrjouNsHznprJuuPDzqT9JT2zhHyFlG3ml80FBpDEGEoGnpNlUDiXeUwkDjgepBaH-grhr1VWG4krvucW3-6UfufC1lmyCVwJsOWJXUWbZmoRF8fH1yncARzQ9trQ/s400/Feingold.jpg" border="0" /></a> been a leading congressional voice against the Bush spy program. This is some of what he had to say.<br /><strong>Sen. Russ Feingold:</strong> The President takes the position that under Article II of the Constitution he can ignore the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. We believe that that's absolutely wrong. I have pointed out that I think it is not only against the law, but I think it's a pretty plain impeachable offense that the President created this program, and yet this immunity provision may have the effect not only of giving immunity to the telephone companies, but it may also allow the administration to block legal accountability for this crime, which I believe it is.<br /><strong>Goodman</strong>: Cass Sunstein?<br /><strong>Cass Sunstein:</strong> Well, there has been a big debate among law professors and within the Supreme Court about the President's adherent authority to wiretap people. And while I agree with <strong>Senator Feingold</strong> that the President's position is wrong and the Supreme Court has recently, indirectly at least, given a very strong signal that the Supreme Court itself has rejected the Bush position, the idea that it's an impeachable offense to adopt an incorrect interpretation of the President's power, that, I think, is too far-reaching. There are people in the Clinton administration who share Bush's view with respect to foreign surveillance. There are past attorney generals who suggested that the Bush administration position is right. So, I do think the Bush administration is wrong -- let's be very clear on that -- but the notion that it's an impeachable offense seems to me to distort the notion of what an impeachable offense is. That's high crimes and misdemeanors. And an incorrect, even a badly incorrect, interpretation of the law is not impeachable.<br /><strong>Goodman:</strong> Glenn Greenwald?<br /><strong>Glenn Greenwald:</strong> You know, I think this mentality that we're hearing is really one of the principal reasons why our government has become so lawless and so distorted over the past thirty years. You know, if you go into any courtroom where there is a criminal on trial for any kind of a crime, they'll have lawyers there who stand up and offer all sorts of legal and factual justifications or defenses for what they did. You know, going back all the way to the pardon of Nixon, you know, you have members of the political elite and law professors standing up and saying, "Oh, there's good faith reasons not to impeach or to criminally prosecute." And then you go to the Iran-Contra scandal, where the members of the Beltway class stood up and said the same things Professor Sunstein is saying: we need to look to the future, it's important that we not criminalize policy debates. You know, you look at Lewis Libby being spared from prison.<br />And now you have an administration that -- we have a law in this country that says it is a felony offense, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, to spy on Americans without the warrants required by law. We have a president who got caught doing that, who admits that he did that. And yet, you have people saying, "Well, there may be legal excuses as to why he did that." Or you have a president who admits ordering, in the White House, planning with his top aides, interrogation policies that the International Red Cross says are categorically torture, which are also felony offenses in the United States. And you have people saying, "Well, we can't criminalize policy disputes."<br />And what this has really done is <em><strong>it's created a two-tiered</strong></em> <em><strong>system of government, where government leaders know that they are free to break our laws,</strong></em> and they'll have members of the pundit class and the political class and law professors standing up and saying, "Well, these are important intellectual issues that we need to grapple with, and it's really not fair to put them inside of a courtroom or talk about prison." And so, we've incentivized lawlessness in this country. I mean, the laws are clear that it's criminal to do these things. The President has done them, and he -- there's no reason to treat him differently than any other citizen who breaks our laws.<br /><strong>Goodman:</strong> You've also, Glenn Greenwald, written about the President possibly granting preemptive pardons to officials involved in controversial counterterrorism programs.<br /><strong>Greenwald</strong>: Yeah, I think that's right. And you already see members of the right -- the New York Times reported about a week ago that certain right-wing legal analysts were already demanding that he issue a full-scale pardon of all members -- of all participants in these illegal detention and surveillance programs. And that's one of the interesting parts about what Senator Obama just did in supporting telecom amnesty, is that those lawsuits that exist, I mean, that were proceeding along, were really our only real avenue for finding out what the government did.<br />I think one critical thing here is that, you know, last year, <strong>James Comey</strong>, who was the number two person at the Justice Department, testified before Congress that they discovered that certain surveillance activities that the administration was engaged in, not what we end up knowing about, but other activities, were so patently illegal that the entire top level of the Justice Department had threatened to resign en masse unless it stopped immediately. And President Bush ordered that it continue for another forty-five days, even once he was told that, and it went on for two-and-a-half years.<br />We don't know what that is. Those lawsuits are really the only way that we would have found out and that there would have been a legal accountability, but because of telecom immunity, those lawsuits are now going to terminate, those crimes are likely to be covered up, and President Bush can simply issue pardons that would prevent any future administrations, Senator Obama's or anyone else's, from investigating it and vindicating the rule of law in this country. And that's what made it such a corrupt measure.<br /><strong>Goodman:</strong> Professor Sunstein, your response to Glenn Greenwald on the whole accountability issue? Also, one of the things you['ve] raised [is that] going after the Bush administration could start a cycle of criminalizing public service.<br /><strong>Sunstein:</strong> Right. We're talking about some pretty serious issues here, and I think it's good to distinguish among various ones. So, are we in favor of immunizing people who worked in the White House in the last eight years from accountability for criminal acts? I don't think anyone should be in favor of that. We're in agreement on the need to hold people accountable for criminal wrongdoing.<br />Then there's a second question, which is the impeachment question, which is analytically very different.<br />Then there's a third issue, which involves pardons. For the President to issue a preemptive pardon of all illegality on the part of those involved in his administration would be in<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkqtlh3e0V_ua1bXf1UMck0jlqtb7uYtoMN1Im_akTeJy9XtFBfNRT-CNBIGUvx_s8Ly4cki9y1xlKbUTV0nRVYAZC3Q55L7ESEa3QYhke1cwHbOKFumpOiXPd6Jmwv-bYnn5qaw/s1600-h/Louis+Brandeis+Associate+Justice+1916.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5232565617476441618" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkqtlh3e0V_ua1bXf1UMck0jlqtb7uYtoMN1Im_akTeJy9XtFBfNRT-CNBIGUvx_s8Ly4cki9y1xlKbUTV0nRVYAZC3Q55L7ESEa3QYhke1cwHbOKFumpOiXPd6Jmwv-bYnn5qaw/s400/Louis+Brandeis+Associate+Justice+1916.jpg" border="0" /></a>tolerable, and the political retribution for that should be extreme. I expect the President won't do that.<br /><strong>With respect to holding people accountable, the first things that's needed is sunlight. Justice Brandeis</strong> <span style="font-size:85%;">(photo, r.),</span> <strong>the Supreme Court justice, said sunlight is the best of disinfectants.</strong> So I agree very much that we want clarity with respect to what's been done. It's important to think, not in a fussy way, but in a way that ensures the kind of fairness our system calls for. It's important to distinguish various processes by which we can produce accountability. I don't believe the courtroom is the exclusive route. Congress is our national lawmaker, and there are processes there that could have a bipartisan quality. There are also commissions that can be created, commissions that can try to figure out what's happened, what's gone wrong and how can we make this better.<br />When I talk about a fear of criminalizing political disagreement, I don't mean to suggest that we shouldn't criminalize crimes. Crimes are against the law, and if there's been egregious wrongdoing in violation of the law, then it's not right to put a blind eye to that. So I guess I'm saying that emotions play an important role in thinking about what the legal system should be doing. But under our constitutional order, we go back and forth between the emotions and the legal requirements, and that's a way of guaranteeing fairness. And as I say, very important to have a degree of bipartisanship with respect to subsequent investigations.<br /><strong>Goodman:</strong> You're cited as the most often cited legal scholar in the country. Yesterday, the military commissions trial began at Guantanamo, first time since World War II. Your take?<br /><strong>Sunstein:</strong> Well, I'd be honored but surprised if the military commissions cite some of my academic articles. In terms of military commissions, there's traditional nervousness in our system about holding people criminally to be tried in a not-an-ordinary tribunal, so there's reason for nervousness about that. I think any military commission, the first requirement is to ensure that the fundamental ingredients of American justice are included -- that is, a right to a lawyer, a right to an impartial tribunal, a right to confront contrary evidence. We don't want any convictions that don't fit with all of our fundamentals.<br /><strong>Goodman</strong>: We're going to come back to talk about your book Nudge , but I want to give Glenn Greenwald a final comment on this issue.<br /><strong>Greenwald:</strong> You know, it's interesting, about the military commissions, yesterday a military judge presiding over the military commission of the individual accused of being Osama bin Laden's<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf7RlwDrKSAFAWD9cWQIPro6q5mamgWJktB4WNMS5NmpGpuQwXXksRR1NvY1_QCzWj_LDEgfwzIiZIwCjW8aNuPTKYYHMLa_SKU0Dd2zvi5oAR6xgRrqigKw2spQ8W01Bm1u0zyw/s1600-h/Salim+Hamdan.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5232564617986994322" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf7RlwDrKSAFAWD9cWQIPro6q5mamgWJktB4WNMS5NmpGpuQwXXksRR1NvY1_QCzWj_LDEgfwzIiZIwCjW8aNuPTKYYHMLa_SKU0Dd2zvi5oAR6xgRrqigKw2spQ8W01Bm1u0zyw/s400/Salim+Hamdan.jpg" border="0" /></a> driver, <strong>Salim Hamdan,</strong> ruled that certain evidence was inadmissible, because it was obtained by what he called, quote, "highly coercive conditions" while he was captive in Afghanistan. And so, you know, we don't need to say things like "if there was serious wrongdoing." We know that there was serious wrongdoing and serious illegality on the part of the Bush administration. But Congress, unfortunately, hasn't done its duty to investigate or oversight; what they've done instead is immunize the law-breaking and protect it and retroactively legalize it. And that's why courtrooms, unfortunately, are the only place where real judicial accountability can occur. That's where criminals are tried under a system of rule of law, is in a courtroom. And there's no reason to exempt the political class from that critical principle. </div><br /><br /><div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-78937122848481752902008-07-30T12:55:00.006-04:002008-08-02T13:39:09.844-04:00Youssef Chahine, Egypt's cinematic great, diesI<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN2fyrT5lFYBisgYAok8f9lHAbasRrL-t-larkvonFXh14LT-5VlPwrBNK4FALX8UuCj2LyaFbosiQnWU1w2K6Zb4z9hXgK588c6k8chKZIBWWgTqTHGAdSFfO29M_hqmBXv0NZg/s1600-h/chahine,+youssef+1997+at+Cannes.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228854637992867106" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN2fyrT5lFYBisgYAok8f9lHAbasRrL-t-larkvonFXh14LT-5VlPwrBNK4FALX8UuCj2LyaFbosiQnWU1w2K6Zb4z9hXgK588c6k8chKZIBWWgTqTHGAdSFfO29M_hqmBXv0NZg/s400/chahine,+youssef+1997+at+Cannes.jpg" border="0" /></a>t's a wrap on one of the boldest careers in the movies. <strong>Youssef Chahine</strong> was the leading voice of the Arab cinema for over half a century – and as prolific, versatile and accomplished as many a more famous western auteur – but his abiding worth, inside Egypt and out, has been in his outspoken expression of the conscience of his country. He took on imperialism and fundamentalism alike, celebrated the liberty of body and soul, and offered himself warts and all as an emblem of his nation. Egypt's modern history is etched in his life's work.<br />Chahine directed his first film, <strong>Baba Amin,</strong> in 1950, when Egypt was still a British colony. He second, <strong>Son of the Nile</strong> (1951), was invited to compete in Cannes, and over the following three decades he averaged more than a film a year, ranging from musicals and comedies to neorealist <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6wIRe1dYOpHam8DzMWVgpBM2tdwbIVgWJ7lKcPdX27-bOoX2tpCSZ1voZv-iHdm2V1sn_j_AHEvTTnfKjxU23cdVNG84d0khi_VEYpqCJlePqjlvcFn0PIUYBrnShcBx57TSp-w/s1600-h/Omar+Sharif+1970.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228859133090227074" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" height="110" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6wIRe1dYOpHam8DzMWVgpBM2tdwbIVgWJ7lKcPdX27-bOoX2tpCSZ1voZv-iHdm2V1sn_j_AHEvTTnfKjxU23cdVNG84d0khi_VEYpqCJlePqjlvcFn0PIUYBrnShcBx57TSp-w/s400/Omar+Sharif+1970.jpg" width="107" border="0" /></a>dramas, historical epics, self-portraits and a documentary. <strong>Chahine discovered Omar Sharif in a Cairo cafe, and gave him his first acting role</strong> in <strong>Blazing Sky</strong> (1953), as a peasant farm engineer fighting the injustices of a feudal landlord. <strong>Jamila, the Algerian</strong> (1958) adapted Jacques Vergès' book about the Algerian resistance fighter Djamila Bouhired, shortly after her torture and trial by the French.<br />Chahine's artistic breakthrough came in another film made the same year. Cairo Station distilled the tumult of General Nasser's new republic into an explosive love triangle between three working denizens of the city's bustling railway hub. Chahine, who had trained as an actor, himself played Qinawi, the lame and simple-minded newspaper boy whose frustrated desire for a flirty lemonade girl is fanned into tragedy; according to the director's own reminiscences in <strong>An Egyptian Story</strong> (1982), he was set to receive the Best Actor prize from the Berlin Film Festival, but some of the jury members doubted that he was merely acting the part of a cripple. Egyptian audiences weren't ready for the film's lively mix of neorealism, noir, sexuality and musical set-pieces, either, and <strong>Cairo Station</strong> went largely unseen for 20 years. (British audiences were treated to a re-release in 2002, and the film still looks groundbreaking. Evidently the flame of neorealism was blowing into shores much further afield than just France in 1958.)<br /><strong>Saladin</strong> (1963), a project Chahine inherited, proposed the 12th-century sultan's defence of Jerusalem against the Christian Crusaders as an epic allegory of Nasser's pan-Arab nationalism, though the Catholic Chahine and his leftist writers also cast Saladin as a paragon of peace and religious tolerance. Chahine's relationship with the post-colonial authorities soon turned more critical, however. <strong>Once Upon a Time the Nile</strong> (1968-78), a documentary of the construction of the Aswan Dam, was delayed for four years by its Egyptian and Soviet sponsors after Chahine steered away from their charter of national myth-making towards a portrait of the dam's impact on individual lives. <strong>The Choice</strong> (1970) was a murder mystery that suggested Egypt's growing intellectual schisms in the wake of the calamitous Six Day War – a defeat for which <strong>The Sparrow</strong> (1973) laid the blame squarely on corruption in the political establishment. Sadat's government duly banned the film for two years. <div><div><div><br />Chahine's ability to link the personal and political took another step forward with his autobiographical Alexandria quartet, named after the cosmopolitan city of his birth. <strong>Alexandria… Why?</strong> (1978) recounted the filmmaking dreams of his teenage alter ego, Yehia, amidst the ambivalently received German occupation of Cairo in 1942: while locals are kidnapping British soldiers, or promising them that "Hitler will turn you into bellydancers", Yehia is dreaming of directing MGM musicals, and various illicit passions flare up between a Jew and a Muslim communist, Yehia's uncle and a young British soldier. It too was widely banned.<br />After a stress-induced sabbatical and open-heart surgery, Chahine dramatised the operation as a trial of Yehia's life in <strong>An Egyptian Story</strong> (1982), his most Fellini-esque film: accused by his conscience of betraying his youthful idealism, he reviews relationships and career milestones against the backdrop of Egypt's post-war metamorphoses. 1990's <strong>Alexandria Again and Forever</strong> (1990) was a musical fantasy in which the entire Egyptian film industry goes on hunger strike for democracy; the Yehia character's fantasies within the film about a young protege actor were Chahine's most forthright illustration of his own bisexuality. </div><div><br />Chahine continued to resist borders wherever the world raised them. His story of the biblical Joseph, <strong>The Emigrant (</strong>1994), was censored in Egypt for idolatry – representing a prophet. Chahine responded with the prescient <strong>Destiny </strong>(1997), a sensualist celebration of the Spanish-Arabian scholar Avarroes (or Ibn Rushd), and his struggles against power-mongering politicians and murderous fundamentalists in 12th-century Moorish Andalusia. It ends with a massive book-burning, and the defiant motto "Ideas have wings. No-one can stop their flight."<br /><strong>Alexandria ... New York</strong> (2004) brought Chahine's alter ego Yehia back to America, half a century after his first visit as a wide-eyed acting student. He finds a lost son, but the promise of the American Dream, and the charm of classical Hollywood, seem sorely mislaid. </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcNE_c0BzBbZjt7ojohnmbX_wNEbqtvrO664xS8jzS9nd-PI0QDT6Wq4wQwFytiE-NAlyeVSSeN36vP5TgE32rsO6WP42B_LCFrJFAZ-9JItH2bh_HS3DH4jYMOBvPOzgL4k2QMw/s1600-h/Chaos+by+Cachine.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228862748896003762" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcNE_c0BzBbZjt7ojohnmbX_wNEbqtvrO664xS8jzS9nd-PI0QDT6Wq4wQwFytiE-NAlyeVSSeN36vP5TgE32rsO6WP42B_LCFrJFAZ-9JItH2bh_HS3DH4jYMOBvPOzgL4k2QMw/s400/Chaos+by+Cachine.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />His last movie, <strong>Chaos</strong>, returned to scrutinising contemporary Cairo. A burlesque about police brutality and bad education, it excoriates Egypt's autocracy for its choke-hold on civil society, and the country's sybaritic elite for abandoning the cause of democracy. The film was released in late 2007 – shooting was completed by Khaled Youssef, Chahine's recent co-writer, when Chahine fell ill – and it plainly anticipates this year's food riots. Islamic fundamentalists also feature in Chaos, but for Chahine the equation is simple: injustice is the incubator of violence.<br />Chahine's films have been released piecemeal on DVD in France and the US, but (with the exception of his contribution to the portmanteau movie 11'09"01 – September 11) never in Britain. They still await their wings.<br />This article was first published on <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/" name="&lid=" lpos="{historyByline}{2}">guardian.co.uk</a> on Monday July 28 2008. </div></div></div>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-41628589741930402532008-07-06T11:33:00.002-04:002008-07-06T19:13:17.861-04:00Opus Opines on Oil - Ohh But He is So Fowl<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg34o1rsVlP0WmmPzK1RB5mDwi3I6PYJnu8VHP67n_D2Ao-rnoaWNUEuHVCXrYFp-VudKXyWogMH5YgudBhRzfvmkzbb7NLRybzAIPHBzWwKql2m0dFnPeecZw21EXO-TibXPbgaA/s1600-h/Opus+and+Oil.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219924816632977666" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 433px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 312px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" height="334" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg34o1rsVlP0WmmPzK1RB5mDwi3I6PYJnu8VHP67n_D2Ao-rnoaWNUEuHVCXrYFp-VudKXyWogMH5YgudBhRzfvmkzbb7NLRybzAIPHBzWwKql2m0dFnPeecZw21EXO-TibXPbgaA/s400/Opus+and+Oil.jpg" width="453" border="0" /></a> <strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Don't ya just LUV Opus?!</span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Bring it on....</span></strong>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-19514825701262851752008-07-05T16:18:00.014-04:002008-07-05T18:28:45.247-04:00The unbearable whiteness of being, or, Bobos in Paradise revisted<strong>The author of "Stuff White People Like" skewers the sacred cows of lefty Caucasian culture, from the Prius to David Sedaris.</strong><br /><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219639085643199458" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrtSKq-PAqXLCSVyW70bcKrZvxPo3WdtNDtMkJ4DypYeZUZ-9oVyWEyRzMH2cTrEJ2W8OO2JOAW1wsaS1Q43dbAsC5qVurlUYXNjjy7zgcQ1ALsvn-k0lskNe7qkMEf04pCRjkcw/s400/whiteness+of+being+photo.jpg" border="0" /><br />By Katharine Mieszkowski<br />Jul. 05, 2008 <br /><a href="http://www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/">Stuff White People Like</a> is a satirical blog about a particular segment of Caucasian culture. It's like an extended "you might be a redneck if" joke recast for a more upscale set. It gently mocks the habits and pretensions of urbane, educated, left-leaning whites, skewering their passion for Barack Obama and public transportation (as long as it's not a bus), their <a href="http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/24/75-threatening-to-move-to-canada/">idle threats</a> to move to Canada, and joy in playing <a href="http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/06/02/102-childrens-games-as-adults/">children's games as adults.</a> Kickball, anyone? (A list of the white stuff is <a href="http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/full-list-of-stuff-white-people-like/">here.</a>)<br />It's likely I don't have to tell you about the Stuff White People Like site, because the odds are someone -- someone white -- has already forwarded it to you. Christian Lander, 29, who grew up in Toronto and now lives in Culver City, Calif., created the site to amuse his friends when he was working as the associate manager of corporate communications for an Internet agency last January. He doesn't do that job anymore, because 32 million hits and a book deal later -- <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FStuff-White-People-Like-Definitive%2Fdp%2F0812979915%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1215099277%26sr%3D1-1&tag=saloncom08-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">"Stuff White People Like: The Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions"</a> was published July 1 -- Lander's become a professional mocker of whitey and himself.<br />Lander is firmly in the demographic he's ribbing. By his own definition, he screams white. A grad school dropout, he studied film and literature in a master's program at the University of Arizona before bailing on a Ph.D. program at Indiana University. In his author's photo, Lander illustrates a number of things he spoofs in the book: He wears a beard, chunky glasses, shorts, a performance athletic vest, New Balance shoes and an iPod, while riding a bike and carrying a reusable water bottle, a Macintosh laptop, organic vegetables and a copy of the New Yorker.<br />Not surprisingly, Lander's site has been embraced by the white culture that he lampoons, complete with an appearance on <a href="http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/31/44-public-radio/">public radio's</a> <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=33372288">"Talk of the Nation."</a> The site's success supports Lander's theory that, as he writes in his book, self-deprecating humor is all a part of whiteness. Lander's site has also inspired copycat sites, such as <a href="http://www.asian-central.com/stuffasianpeoplelike/">Stuff Asian People Like,</a> as well as hate mail accusing him of racist stereotyping and <a href="http://www.tnr.com/booksarts/story.html?id=49eb53ed-afbc-4aae-bf17-6ffc44f40a48">critiques</a> that he's pretending to poke fun at white people while actually giving them new ways to feel superior.<br />Salon spoke with Lander by phone from his home office, where his fixed-gear bicycle hangs on the wall, near the shelves of books, proudly displayed.<br /><strong>What led you to launch your site Stuff White People Like?<br /></strong>My friend Myles Valentin and I were both at work, and we were just having an IM [instant messenger] conversation. We were talking about "The Wire." We're both huge fans of the TV show "The Wire." And then my friend Myles, who is Filipino, said he didn't trust any w<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8MolkUgSafihCH0IuUvtsbkSMI75aHKodqksZDT1IvQqy__WCND-qoij280ztc9ya-H8vrJXlkQA2Z1AhDwX7lHOGdIcgeB76pXXJ09N1W8D2oFncHZmselGRBgzN3kEQolRGWg/s1600-h/yoga+pic.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219648653423439778" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8MolkUgSafihCH0IuUvtsbkSMI75aHKodqksZDT1IvQqy__WCND-qoij280ztc9ya-H8vrJXlkQA2Z1AhDwX7lHOGdIcgeB76pXXJ09N1W8D2oFncHZmselGRBgzN3kEQolRGWg/s400/yoga+pic.jpg" border="0" /></a>hite people who don't watch "The Wire."<br />From there we ended up talking about what are white people doing instead of watching "The Wire"? And we threw back a few responses, like <a href="http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/22/15-yoga/">doing yoga,</a> <a href="http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/15/68-divorce/">getting divorced,</a> going to therapy. And I thought it was funny.<br />So I went to Word Press, and I just started writing, never expecting it to be popular, just expecting Myles to read it, and maybe a few more friends back home. And that was it. It wasn't any more of a grand scheme than that.<br /><strong>Obviously you're not talking about all white people. Which white people are you talking about?<br /></strong>I think it doesn't take long reading the site to figure out which white people I'm talking about. It's mostly left-wing, upper-middle-class.<br /><strong>In the book, you also occasionally mention "the wrong kind" of white people. Who are the wrong kind of white people</strong>?<br />There are a lot of the wrong kind of white people. You have, obviously, poor, right-wing white people, and rich, right-wing white people.<br />Yet a lot of the stuff you write that white people like, obviously many other people like, too.<br />When you create a site called Stuff White People Like, it's easy for people to make an <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVOt8Mvz6aztZVAx219g2BaA54aFgWsiBpxNTAhpCBiO95Fm6HXltglWS9o0d3b23i1Mr_Z3Y_WtAY1pAB3nq-vU0-ruFTw1hHwtoKR01QtTiCTwwO6b2sr0J7ZvsjoztI3qWQkQ/s1600-h/fiji+water+bottle.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219641124123812130" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVOt8Mvz6aztZVAx219g2BaA54aFgWsiBpxNTAhpCBiO95Fm6HXltglWS9o0d3b23i1Mr_Z3Y_WtAY1pAB3nq-vU0-ruFTw1hHwtoKR01QtTiCTwwO6b2sr0J7ZvsjoztI3qWQkQ/s400/fiji+water+bottle.jpg" border="0" /></a>assumption that it's actually about stuff only white people like. It's not meant to be exclusionary but rather a focus on the things that, well, white people like.<br /><strong>Let's talk about some of them. What is the significance of </strong><a href="http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/06/07/bottlemania/"><strong>bottles of water</strong></a><strong>?</strong><br />It's all about ranking. It's essentially a contest. It used to be that bottled water was a status symbol. You drink Evian, or you drink Fiji, or what is the most expensive water.<br />But advanced-level white people, the higher-ranking white people, realized that they were <a href="http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/01/14/ask_pablo_water/">creati</a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaYYh2n3xN9iPatBOuJdSaYwHFj461aqMD5T3V2jrG44y5JGaHbnp-GgffNxob1eM4ZkJBzd-q_xZd1Ok64mSruyBchG_sTCF9_RE9gevJ22mbkgP8WpNkz4wWFc0MoYBSfT1OFg/s1600-h/nalgene+bottles.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219642988199778578" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" height="204" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaYYh2n3xN9iPatBOuJdSaYwHFj461aqMD5T3V2jrG44y5JGaHbnp-GgffNxob1eM4ZkJBzd-q_xZd1Ok64mSruyBchG_sTCF9_RE9gevJ22mbkgP8WpNkz4wWFc0MoYBSfT1OFg/s400/nalgene+bottles.jpg" width="171" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/01/14/ask_pablo_water/">ng a lot of waste,</a> and so they switched over to the <a href="http://www.nalgene-outdoor.com/">Nalgene bottle.</a> That also reminded them of going camping. So then they could take a stance of superiority over the people who were drinking bottled water. And then, that <a href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/bpa-in-water.php">whole story came out</a> about Nalgenes leaching I don't know what the exact toxin is [Bisphenol A]. So then super-advanced white people went even further and got those metal <a href="http://www.mysigg.com/">Sigg bottles</a>, and now you<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrnkQTSnW4sk-WHektMXW8iFNfsuMSnVvbgG5C8aZ7GtjaJcWWgGLvUsscvPrqjp5kB26wjtfd-yJCmL5yy_I0qqMWFGDUxjYNbHuxKt0W8-CCfl8HNEAJHJDDukMnPRxWZ7e_Yw/s1600-h/feed+bag.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219650713192896642" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 188px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 177px" height="228" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrnkQTSnW4sk-WHektMXW8iFNfsuMSnVvbgG5C8aZ7GtjaJcWWgGLvUsscvPrqjp5kB26wjtfd-yJCmL5yy_I0qqMWFGDUxjYNbHuxKt0W8-CCfl8HNEAJHJDDukMnPRxWZ7e_Yw/s400/feed+bag.jpg" width="226" border="0" /></a> have this really solid hierarchy and ranking of white people of commercial bottled water, Nalgene bottle and either the glass or metal, twist-top bottles.<br />What's the significance of an eco product, like the <a href="http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/04/21/ask_pablo_cars/">Toyota Prius,</a> the <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/05/26/offsets/">carbon offset</a> or the <a href="http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2008/01/14/plastic_bags/">reusable shopping bag?</a><br />That again is another way to claim superiority over regular-level, or subpar, white people. You're saving the environment, you're making a difference. It helps remind you and others that your lifestyle is making things better.<br /><strong>Why is it important to hate evil corporations, except for Apple, Ikea and Target?</strong><br />That's one of the great contradictions of white people. For the most part, all the world's ills are based on large, evil corporations -- government corruption, American expansion through the u<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxQH6x5n_19PrnIBBmSNSbncccTfZgqD_ssxOr3YLf1H5r0UShq9irnwd-5upJJ1vMUfbZrCO7OShx0M3GIENPm5ka4DO7YsHPAv_-95NZIgeAQ5dKuN4kTH_hGRDWNly9hyphenhyphenPviw/s1600-h/Apple+logo.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219652099276017282" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxQH6x5n_19PrnIBBmSNSbncccTfZgqD_ssxOr3YLf1H5r0UShq9irnwd-5upJJ1vMUfbZrCO7OShx0M3GIENPm5ka4DO7YsHPAv_-95NZIgeAQ5dKuN4kTH_hGRDWNly9hyphenhyphenPviw/s400/Apple+logo.jpg" border="0" /></a>se of corporate contracts, pollution, globalization, every bad thing that's happened. But if it happens with nice design, it's acceptable.<br /><strong>What happens if you point out these exceptions?</strong><br />You're going to really annoy white people. They do not need to be reminded. It's like with the Prius. It's not a good idea to remind Prius owners that the car still burns gasoline. That really pisses them off.<br /><strong>You are a graduate school dropout. What is the significance of graduate school?</strong><br />Graduate school -- it's very important, because you sort of get this impression in the rest of the world that getting advanced degrees helps you get a higher-paying job. But interestingly, within white culture it actually gets you lower-paying jobs.<br /><strong>Why is that?</strong><br />A Ph.D. in English isn't going to get you a higher-paying job than, say, a Ph.D. in chemistry or law, but it does give you one important thing, which is academic credibility at cocktail parties.<br /><strong>But obviously, there are a lot of white lawyers. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYOHlnXepVMdzsuoETxNFvSthPHcdpcPHKI2wIQAVKq9uEf92om6czPE0dMDc_Z4itX4vNbNJkOASB5u4PJPb4UzdnEVnTLy0KuwcEJuUXKb9KqJMeBtLh23wNdeZY-lSfaHay9g/s1600-h/lawyer+image.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219652880837095314" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" height="112" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYOHlnXepVMdzsuoETxNFvSthPHcdpcPHKI2wIQAVKq9uEf92om6czPE0dMDc_Z4itX4vNbNJkOASB5u4PJPb4UzdnEVnTLy0KuwcEJuUXKb9KqJMeBtLh23wNdeZY-lSfaHay9g/s400/lawyer+image.jpg" width="141" border="0" /></a><br /></strong>Oh, yeah. Some of the white people, who are not quite advanced enough white people, have sold out.<br /><strong>What does going to law school represent?<br /></strong>It's what you do when you finish with your liberal arts degree, and you start to panic about realizing that the careers available for someone who knows a lot about Proust are very limited, and you realize that you still want money. So you end up going to law school. There are people who enjoy law school, because then you can work for a nonprofit organization, and you can be very helpful.<br /><strong>Why is working for a nonprofit important?<br /></strong>White people have the constant and unabiding need to feel as though they're helping, and because this gives them the<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw5USNboZUC4i7JPQfyEVhh02gCQhiyyaZhZRGlQcQJHemKEq08VlAYC1ihiL73SjoxWN8ZGdzof7X1894zXxMAmqC09n6GoY_lbkfdyE_6Q0Kv7nmniWZlWqsucrZIO4RRFdZxA/s1600-h/ROSIE-O-DONNEL-BARRY-MANILOW-.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219653853947547154" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 250px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 201px" height="220" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw5USNboZUC4i7JPQfyEVhh02gCQhiyyaZhZRGlQcQJHemKEq08VlAYC1ihiL73SjoxWN8ZGdzof7X1894zXxMAmqC09n6GoY_lbkfdyE_6Q0Kv7nmniWZlWqsucrZIO4RRFdZxA/s400/ROSIE-O-DONNEL-BARRY-MANILOW-.jpg" width="318" border="0" /></a> ability to hold it over other people.<br /><strong>Who are the whitest celebrities?<br /></strong>Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rosie O'Donnell.<br /><strong>Is the whitest TV show "The Wire?"<br /></strong>It's not the whitest TV show. It's just a TV show beloved by white people, because it was really well done, and it got low ratings. These are two very important characteristics for white people to like a TV show. In order to be known as an ultimate white TV show, you have to make sure that you don't last more than five seasons.<br />But isn't it kind of a contradiction, because isn't bragging about <a href="http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/26/28-not-having-a-tv/">not having a TV</a> also a sign of status?<br />Yes, because do you know how white people consume "The Wire"? Netflix subscription watched on their MacBook. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXslEyhY6z5SZjkc52noXWcxIPMEPEzDJ7p2mn1rVJKhcWZ5LvDfhM1n5L9ZyiS5G_u_sXAREUZibQJ09Vmd7_3W8sgLY4irlyqbzNX-j9X-EHqxbhdPvbgj3j3lQjWUWblrVZ1A/s1600-h/Twin+Peaks.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219656958069320946" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 140px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 176px" height="318" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXslEyhY6z5SZjkc52noXWcxIPMEPEzDJ7p2mn1rVJKhcWZ5LvDfhM1n5L9ZyiS5G_u_sXAREUZibQJ09Vmd7_3W8sgLY4irlyqbzNX-j9X-EHqxbhdPvbgj3j3lQjWUWblrVZ1A/s400/Twin+Peaks.jpg" width="236" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>What do you think is the whitest TV show ever?</strong><br /><a href="http://dir.salon.com/topics/twin_peaks/">"Twin Peaks"</a> is a contender. <a href="http://www.salon.com/nov96/tv961111.html">"Mr. Show"</a> is definitely on that list. "The Simpsons" is on there, although in recent years it's also declined a little bit.<br />A very important concept when you're dealing with white people is this idea of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark">"jumping the shark."</a> And "The Simpsons" is one of the best examples of that. You have to make sure that when you talk about "The Simpsons" you know exactly the appropriate moment to say when you stopped liking it.<br />If you say you stopped liking it too early, you look too snobby. If you say you stopped liking it too late, you kind of look like an idiot. So, the best answer is you say the "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" episodes.<br /><strong>What's the whitest movie ever?</strong><br />This one is a challenge. <a href="http://archive.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2001/12/14/tenenbaums/index.html">"The Royal Tenenbaums"</a> is up <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj5Yb3zTev7_Q5tQQJqTN8jFTa5vUUOGkXuCNt6S3czuuILRFD-LbIFnpMTJ9ZtPUDAdqZCJk5eBNHFRsG-jY3WcxbylMrNNvMdxwVpbtGWG4JYMSMhNYXEHUZ6yFlvk4ywZyDfQ/s1600-h/Royal+Tenenbaums.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219657738105143346" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" height="205" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj5Yb3zTev7_Q5tQQJqTN8jFTa5vUUOGkXuCNt6S3czuuILRFD-LbIFnpMTJ9ZtPUDAdqZCJk5eBNHFRsG-jY3WcxbylMrNNvMdxwVpbtGWG4JYMSMhNYXEHUZ6yFlvk4ywZyDfQ/s400/Royal+Tenenbaums.jpg" width="203" border="0" /></a>there. <a href="http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/movies/review/2004/07/28/garden_state/">"Garden State."</a> "Donnie Darko" is on there. "Fight Club."<br />The problem is that whatever is liked by white people, advanced-level white people have to hate it, because it was popular. The advanced levels have to have some sort of French film in there from Godard. Some people need a Japanese film that hasn't been translated yet. You'll get some white people who are like, "I only watch silent film." It's difficult.<br /><strong>What about the whitest band?</strong><br />Right now? I have to say Vampire Weekend all the way. They're pushing it to levels unseen.<br /><strong>Let's talk about food.</strong><br />Food is another important area of competition, and being able to show up other white people. Some white people get their status based on how much they know about food, like expensive ingredients or foreign cuisine. Whereas other white people gain their status based on how many things they've cut out of what they eat, like gluten and sugar and refined things and dairy and meat, trying to reduce as much as possible.<br />But universally, throughout, shopping at Whole Foods is considered the best way to go.<br /><strong>But what about </strong><a href="http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/18/5-farmers-markets/"><strong>farmers' markets?</strong></a><br />Unless you're in California, where you have year-round farmers' markets, you need consistency throughout the year, and Whole Foods provides that.<br /><strong>Definitely organic, when you're talking about fruits and vegetables?</strong><br />This isn't even a question.<br /><strong>What meals are important?</strong><br />Breakfast on the weekend, I guess you'd call it brunch, too, is one of the most important white meals, because it allows white couples to get together. Some people even bring their dogs, if they have outdoor patios. During the week for working white people, the <a href="http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/11/63-expensive-sandwiches/">expensive sandwich</a> lunch is essential. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg067HhJXvER2qqIIlbfNXxN4oFPX55S8j7febys1P4sE_2cn7JNKlsk3ODmHDtIMlxoJd06RXwPJAJZmX7pzB4Og2raah77Cslk5Sd-FhhSZvvLReqoRzN4c0u8oKTEIeFQXor-Q/s1600-h/sandwich+pic.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219658523089717186" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 236px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 155px" height="197" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg067HhJXvER2qqIIlbfNXxN4oFPX55S8j7febys1P4sE_2cn7JNKlsk3ODmHDtIMlxoJd06RXwPJAJZmX7pzB4Og2raah77Cslk5Sd-FhhSZvvLReqoRzN4c0u8oKTEIeFQXor-Q/s400/sandwich+pic.jpg" width="275" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>What do you mean by the expensive sandwich?</strong><br />Anywhere you will find a predominance of white businesses, such as advertising agencies, nonprofit organizations, hedge funds, there will undoubtedly be a store nearby that sells sandwiches that cost between $8 and $12.<br /><strong>You've already mentioned eating outside. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of the outdoors?</strong><br />It's just where white people want to be. From the time white people are raised, they're taught that being indoors is a bad thing, and that it's always better to be outside. So they're always on this constant quest to be camping or bicycling or eating outside, whatever it takes to get outside. The more time you spend outside the more credibility you have to dump on other people for not going outside.<br />And even if you're not outside, you might be wearing what you call <a href="http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/03/11/87-outdoor-performance-clothes/">outdoor performance clothes.</a> <strong>Why is that?<br /></strong>White people need to know that if someone calls them up, and says: "You want to go camping?" they're ready at the drop of a hat. Bam, out they go. You could be in the Ikea, just leave the cart in one of the aisles, head up to some campsite.<br /><strong>Can you ta<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWoOk-whfhR74FxbIS9HGQO999gkLbDgMfMglzTac9jlsorhBcQlG1PMdgNPUVGkVaeftNzjl3KzCGbfTvT2CUozZ8mI7RKX8YUi36KpXVDVZFxyt_cUK1Enq8V3IRybOgtIvTCw/s1600-h/Sedaris.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219659154061830082" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 153px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 218px" height="297" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWoOk-whfhR74FxbIS9HGQO999gkLbDgMfMglzTac9jlsorhBcQlG1PMdgNPUVGkVaeftNzjl3KzCGbfTvT2CUozZ8mI7RKX8YUi36KpXVDVZFxyt_cUK1Enq8V3IRybOgtIvTCw/s400/Sedaris.jpg" width="214" border="0" /></a>lk about the deep love of David Sedaris?<br /></strong>It's hard to talk about it. It's like talking about a love of oxygen. It's just there.<br /><strong>Why David Sedaris?</strong><br />They love him, because he's funny, and he lives in France, and he's gay. He's like everything you could possibly want in the ideal friend. Oh, he also writes for the New Yorker. He hits so many things on the list it's unbelievable.<br />On the site, I've been getting all these e-mails from people who have gone to his signings, and they said that it's just like this sea of white people and huge lineups usually reserved for rock stars.<br /><strong>You have this quiz in your book to calculate how white you are. So, how white are you?</strong><br />It's tough for me to say this, because there is the answer based on my quiz, and then the fact that I wrote the book gives me like a bonus score. So, I'm going to say 91 percent.<br /><strong>So, are you like the ultimate, advanced, elite white person, because you are categorizing all the rest of them?</strong><br />I think, but I know that people are gunning for me, and I don't think that it's going to last much longer.<br /><strong>Do you see yourself as critiquing this white culture, or are you kind of celebrating it?</strong><br />I think I'm critiquing it, as well. I make fun of myself a lot on the site. That's why I put my photo on there to let people know that I'm making fun of myself. It's been a great chance for me to call out so many of my pretentious leanings.<br />There is such a strong belief among this type of people that you're right, of being unwilling to listen to anything else, and I think that's one of the things I'm trying to point out. There is a critique in there, but the top priority is to be funny.<br /><strong>But don't you say that even self-deprecating humor is a marker of the white culture?<br /></strong>Yeah. I was trying so hard to sound smart there, and you totally called me out on it.<br />White people figured out an awesome way to use self-deprecating humor to compliment themselves. Like, when you talk about being "broke," what you're really saying is that the people with money are sellouts.<br /><strong>Haven't you gotten a lot of hate mail about the site?</strong><br />Yeah. I used to read all the comments on the site, when it was getting like 30,000 hits a day, and I was getting comments every couple of minutes. I was reading them all, because it was fascinating to me, and there are so many funny people out there. But as it got bigger, people left a lot of mean comments about me, about the site, so I stopped reading them entirely, because I was trying to write the book, and I just wanted to stay positive. Reading the comments broke my spirit. I'd just feel so down. But I still read every e-mail that comes in.<br /><strong>Are the angry commenters mad about the idea of the site, or do they feel like you're making fun of them?</strong><br />A lot of them just hate me for the fact that the site got popular. A lot of people just hate it because they think I'm being racist, but they don't really think it through. The people who write in think that I'm perpetuating hate, and that all stereotypes are evil, and I think that they're kind of missing the point.<br /><strong>The white people who like your site -- are you just giving them another way to feel self-congratulatory?</strong><br />Possibly. That might be part of it. It's a funny concept that is open-ended. A lot of people can add their things that I'm missing.<br />To some extent I'm sure there is some self-congratulation in there, and that's fine. I'm not a performance artist here. I'm really trying to make people laugh more than anything. If it leads to questioning, that's great, but I think a lot of people are quite proud with how white they are, which is certainly an unintended consequence.<br />-- By Katharine Mieszkowski<br /><a href="http://sacdcad03.salon.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/www.salonmagazine.com/mwt/content/large.html/230107313/Bottom1/default/empty.gif/51373850776b61754871414142455147" target="_top"></a><a href="http://sacdcad03.salon.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/www.salonmagazine.com/mwt/content/large.html/376791919/Bottom/default/empty.gif/51373850776b61754871414142455147" target="_top"></a><a href="http://sacdcad03.salon.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/www.salonmagazine.com/mwt/content/large.html/659032649/Bottom2/default/empty.gif/51373850776b61754871414142455147" target="_top"></a></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-55140247591598066562008-07-03T16:41:00.004-04:002008-07-04T16:09:56.656-04:00World Bank Challenges US position, Biofuels are prime cause of food crisis, says leaked report<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtbA-dZ-3HDqMvoz18O5SyVzuIWv4njPcWdWpNp2OkVbYAFD2xWEP7Z71Jdkt1KvK24LCL3YIuAUEw212dY7UfXPxx0KFDcAmKdorBWeUBSQRotnvw1JAB8AGlUN_8fXvy5hAKYA/s1600-h/Oxfam+in+Africa.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219253577536802722" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtbA-dZ-3HDqMvoz18O5SyVzuIWv4njPcWdWpNp2OkVbYAFD2xWEP7Z71Jdkt1KvK24LCL3YIuAUEw212dY7UfXPxx0KFDcAmKdorBWeUBSQRotnvw1JAB8AGlUN_8fXvy5hAKYA/s400/Oxfam+in+Africa.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><em>The World Bank refutes claims that biofuels are benign, rather, their production and incorp0rating them into the industrial world-wide fuel mix has been catastrophic on the cost of food. Turns out they are making the pollution problem, worse, the food riots predictable, and the self-vested industry lobbyists further protected and getting richer while the common person pays and pays and in more cases, starve, with over 100 million more pushed below the poverty line. Not a pretty picture. So much for the vaunted 'green fuel" solution. This story, leaked to the Guardian in London. - MS</em><br /><br />***<br />Thursday July 3, 2008<br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/adityachakrabortty" name="&lid={contentTypeByline}{Aditya Chakrabortty}&lpos={contentTypeByline}{1}">Aditya Chakrabortty</a><br />Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% — far more than previously estimated — according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian. The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.<br />The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.<br />Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush. "It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House," said one yesterday.<br />The news comes at a critical point in the world's negotiations on biofuels policy. Leaders of the G8 industrialised countries meet next week in Hokkaido, Japan, where they will discuss the food crisis and come under intense lobbying from campaigners calling for a moratorium on the use of plant-derived fuels.<br />It will also put pressure on the British government, which is due to release its own report on the impact of biofuels, the Gallagher Report. The Guardian has previously reported that the British study will state that plant fuels have <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/19/climatechange.biofuels">played a "significant" part in pushing up food prices</a> to record levels. Although it was expected last week, the report has still not been released.<br />"Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises," said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam. "It is imperative that we have the full picture. While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat."<br />Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as "the first real economic crisis of globalisation".<br />President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand from India and China, but the leaked World Bank study disputes that: "Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases."<br />Even successive droughts in Australia, calculates the report, have had a marginal impact. Instead, it argues that the EU and US drive for biofuels has had by far the biggest impact on food supply and prices.<br />Since April, all petrol and diesel in Britain has had to include 2.5% from biofuels. The EU has been considering raising that target to 10% by 2020, but is faced with mounting evidence that that will only push food prices higher.<br />"Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate," says the report. The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and this February. The report estimates that higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15%, while biofuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period.<br />It argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.<br />Other reviews of the food crisis looked at it over a much longer period, or have not linked these three factors, and so arrived at smaller estimates of the impact from biofuels. But the report author, Don Mitchell, is a senior economist at the Bank and has done a detailed, month-by-month analysis of the surge in food prices, which allows much closer examination of the link between biofuels and food supply.<br />The report points out biofuels derived from sugarcane, which Brazil specializes in, have not had such a dramatic impact.<br />Supporters of biofuels argue that they are a greener alternative to relying on oil and other fossil fuels, but even that claim has been disputed by some experts, who argue that it does not apply to US production of ethanol from plants.<br />"It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices," said Dr David King, the government's former chief scientific adviser, last night. "All we are doing by supporting these is subsidising higher food prices, while doing nothing to tackle climate change."</div>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-3227235008274035012008-06-23T14:48:00.004-04:002008-06-24T03:34:10.715-04:00I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately. -- George Carlin<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215151618492242962" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9pKLCjnoqerr8v4AAMmVTQndQPwBsxx11BRTnujA-lqZIPHOgyNeCRZyNNvqp6KZUpGeU5EzLermQ2uxxDkUweeEce1nclxxMzoBSdOla2Te7sjGOfVaQjakdSSYqYgbgdf1RaA/s400/carlin.gif" border="0" /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">George Carlin: American Radical</span></strong>From John Nichols at The Nation.<br /><br /><div></div><div>The last vote that George Carlin said he cast in a presidential race was for George McGovern in 1972.<br />When Richard Nixon, who Carlin described as a member of a sub-species of humanity, overwhelmingly defeated McGovern, the comedian gave up on the political process.<br />"Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians," he explained in a routine that challenged all the premises of today's half-a-loaf reformers. "Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. <strong>There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.'"<br /></strong>Needless to say, George Carlin was not on message for 2008's "change we can believe in" election season.<br /><strong>His was a darker and more serious take on the crisis – and the change of consciousness, sweeping in scope and revolutionary in character, that was required to address it.</strong><br />Carlin may have stopped voting in 1972. But America's most consistently savage social commentator for the best part of a half century, who has died at age 71, did not give up on politics.<br />In recent years, in front of audiences that were not always liberal, he <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UVXj8F9Fmk&feature=related">tore apart the neo-conservative assault on liberty</a> with a clarity rarely evidenced in the popular culture.<br />Recalling George Bush's ranting about how the endless "war on terror" is a battle for freedom, Carlin echoed James Madison's thinking with a simple question: "Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?"<br />Carlin gave the Christian right – and the Christian left – <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o&feature=related">no quarter</a>. "I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State," Carlin said. "My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."<br />Carlin's take on the Ronald Reagan administration is the best antidote to the counterfactual romanticization of the former president – in which even Barack Obama has engaged – remains the single finest assessment of Reagan and his inner circle. While Carlin did not complain much about politicians, he made an exception with regard to the great communicator. Recorded in 1988 at the Park Theater in Union City, New Jersey, and later released as an album -- What Am I Doing in New Jersey? – his savage recollection of the then-concluding Reagan-Bush<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcg1XBtz5RgXI6bAUOlAtxz80FCyqfjjWVL6LebfRKunZlzvTLbvq7R59C8MnhQVnbyK8-2LgrP3Wdwfx9h3J7W18yPOMvSG5T5CnqyovBGGWBV6GtpuzcTFY1M0JCDKzLbxyH6Q/s1600-h/Reagan+waving+hands.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215152345667318386" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcg1XBtz5RgXI6bAUOlAtxz80FCyqfjjWVL6LebfRKunZlzvTLbvq7R59C8MnhQVnbyK8-2LgrP3Wdwfx9h3J7W18yPOMvSG5T5CnqyovBGGWBV6GtpuzcTFY1M0JCDKzLbxyH6Q/s400/Reagan+waving+hands.jpg" border="0" /></a> years opened with the line: "I really haven't seen this many people in one place since they took the group photograph of all the criminals and lawbreakers in the Ronald Reagan administration."<br />But there was no nostalgia for past fights, no resting on laurels, for this topical comedian. He read the papers, he followed the news, he asked questions – the interviews I did with Carlin over the years were more conversations than traditional Q & A's – and he turned it all into a running commentary that focused not so much on politics as on the ugly intersection of power and economics.<br />No one, not Obama, not Hillary Clinton and certainly not John McCain, caught <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI5EY5kqiBU&feature=related">the zeitgeist of the vanishing American dream</a> so well as Carlin. "The owners of this country know the truth: It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."<br />Not just aware of but steeped in the traditions of American populism – more William Jennings Bryan and Eugene Victor Debs than Bill Clinton or John Kerry – Carlin preached against the consolidation of wealth and power with a fire-and-brimstone rage that betrayed a deep moral sense that could never quite be cloaked with four-letter words.<br />"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying – lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else," ranted the comedian whose routines were studied in graduate schools.<br />"But I'll tell you what they don't want," Carlin continued. "They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. You know what they want? Obedient workers – people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."<br />Carlin did not want Americans to get involved with the system.<br />He wanted citizens to get angry enough to remake the system.<br />Carlin was a leveler of the old, old school. And no one who had so public a platform – as the first host of NBC's "Saturday Night Live," a regular on broadcast and cable televisions shows, a best-selling author and a favorite character actor in films (he was even the narrator of the American version of he provided the narrative voice for the American version of the children's show "Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends") – did more to challenge accepted wisdom regarding our political economy.<br />"Let's suppose we all just materialized on Earth and there was a bunch of potatoes on the ground, okay? There's just six of us. Only six humans. We come into a clearing and there's potatoes on the ground. Now, my instinct would be, let's everybody get some potatoes. "Everybody got a potato? Joey didn't get a potato! He's small, he can't hold as many potatoes. Give Joey some of your potatoes." "No, these are my potatoes!" That's the Republicans. "I collected more of them, I got a bigger pile of potatoes, they're mine. If you want some of them, you're going to have to give me something." "But look at Joey, he's only got a couple, they won't last two days." That's the fuckin' difference! And I'm more inclined to want to share and even out," he explained in an interview several years ago with the Onion.<br />"I understand the marketplace, but government is supposed to be here to redress the inequities of the marketplace," Carlin continued. "That's one of its functions. Not just to protect the nation, secure our security and all that shit. And not just to take care of great problems that are trans-state problems, that are national, but also to make sure that the inequalities of the marketplace are redressed by the acts of government. That's what welfare was about. There are people who really just don't have the tools, for whatever reason. Yes, there are lazy people. Yes, there are slackers. Yes, there's all of that. But there are also people who can't cut it, for any given reason, whether it's racism, or an educational opportunity, or poverty, or a fuckin' horrible home life, or a history of a horrible family life going back three generations, or whatever it is. They're crippled and they can't make it, and they deserve to rest at the commonweal. That's where my fuckin' passion lies."<br />Like the radicals of the early years of the 20th century, whose politics he knew and respected, Carlin understood that free-speech fights had to come first. And always pushed the limit – happily choosing an offensive word when a more polite one might have sufficed. By 1972, the year he won the first of four Grammys for best comedy album, he had developed his most famous routine: "Seven Words (You Can't Say on Television)."<br />That summer, at a huge outdoor show in Milwaukee, he uttered all seven of them in public – and was promptly arrested for disturbing the peace.<br />When a version of the routine was aired in 1973 on WBAI, the Pacifica Foundation radio station in New York,. Pacifica received a citation from the FCC. Pacifica was ordered to pay a fine for violating federal regulations prohibiting the broadcast of "obscene" language. The ensuing free-speech fight made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which rile 5-4 against the First Amendment to the Constitution, Pacifica and Carlin.<br />Amusingly, especially to the comedian, a full transcript of the routine ended up in court documents associated with the case, F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978).<br />"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," recalled Carlin. Proud enough that you can find the <a href="http://www.georgecarlin.com/home/home.html">court records</a> on the comedian's website: www.georgecarlin.com<br />There will, of course, be those who dismiss Carlin as a remnant of the sixties who introduced obscenity to the public discourse – just as there will be those who misread his critique of the American political and economic systems as little more than verbal nihilism. In fact, George Carlin was, like the radicals of an earlier age, an idealist – and a patriot --of a deeper sort than is encountered very often these days.<br />Carlin explained himself best in one of his last interviews. "There is a certain amount of righteous indignation I hold for this culture, because to get back to the real root of it, to get broader about it, my opinion that is my species--and my culture in America specifically--have let me down and betrayed me. I think this species had great, great promise, with this great upper brain that we have, and I think we squandered it on God and Mammon. And I think this culture of ours has such promise, with the promise of real, true freedom, and then everyone has been shackled by ownership and possessions and acquisition and status and power," he said. "And perhaps it's just a human weakness and an inevitable human story that these things happen. But there's disillusionment and some discontent in me about it. I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. But I understand the word 'cynic' has more than one meaning, and I see how I could be seen as cynical. 'George, you're cynical.' Well, you know, they say if you scratch a cynic you find a disappointed idealist. And perhaps the flame still flickers a little, you know?"</div>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-33718479804649327042008-06-23T02:10:00.005-04:002008-06-23T02:32:21.095-04:00Three Words I Never Wanted to Say: George Carlin's Dead<strong> George Carlin Is Dead...Long Live George Carlin!</strong> Carlin is my long-time favorite <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214955559032164450" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhESgizuuZiItsxNhmjRERhrFf_YS6gREVnHhK8XrT3vlUdBayIBcq3pyc4P91Ig_vroKdxVKdkaAf637FEzM4-Fa2272WAlgDpkmN1FNFFcd5CX9h3YxFRj-OSC3hLJZHGU4REZw/s400/carlin.gif" border="0" />"comedian" and wit, the jester who spoke loudly, outrageously and insistently about the absurdity of modern life, and the language of deception, and deceit. My hero has died today, age 71, and with his passing one of our era's most incisive and acid-tongued, truth-tellers, exposing the hypocrisies and deceits of modern life, lacerating the mighty and pompous, to the great delight of all those he spoke out in support or sympatico.<br /><div>The Grammy-Award winning standup comedian and actor who was hailed for his irreverent social commentary, poignant observations of the absurdities of everyday life and language, and groundbreaking routines like “Seven Words You Can Never Use on Television,” died in Santa Monica, Calif., on Sunday, according to his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He was 71.<br />The cause of death was heart failure, according to Mr. Abraham.<br />Mr. Carlin began his standup comedy act in the late 1950s and made his first television solo guest appearance on “The <a title="More articles about Merv Griffin" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/merv_griffin/index.html?inline=nyt-per">Merv Griffin</a> Show” in 1965. At that time, he was primarily known for his clever wordplay and reminiscences of his Irish working-class upbringing in New York.<br />But from the outset their were indications of an anti-establishment edge to his comedy. Initially, it surfaced in the witty patter of a host of offbeat characters like the wacky sportscaster Biff Barf and the hippy-dippy weatherman Al Sleet. “The weather was dominated by a large Canadian low, which is not to be confused with a Mexican high. Tonight’s forecast . . . dark, continued mostly dark tonight turning to widely scattered light in the morning.”<br />Mr. Carlin released his first comedy album, “Take-Offs and Put-Ons,” to rave reviews i<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvkqLuLcp8lzPgdzmbCfFMtGbxFCOUa4nplXL2WY7sLjO4ep7sincyjGHeGq2HRx0ku0DRaDFGUsyBRUFGlEgXcierXqrRZpyLjzS3mAxwIVbp7BrjO70VyzBc8DzfUNayg_VMvA/s1600-h/Carlin.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214955673657406018" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvkqLuLcp8lzPgdzmbCfFMtGbxFCOUa4nplXL2WY7sLjO4ep7sincyjGHeGq2HRx0ku0DRaDFGUsyBRUFGlEgXcierXqrRZpyLjzS3mAxwIVbp7BrjO70VyzBc8DzfUNayg_VMvA/s400/Carlin.jpg" border="0" /></a>n 1967. He also dabbled in acting, winning a recurring part as <a title="" href="http://movies.nytimes.com/person/70613/Marlo-Thomas?inline=nyt-per">Marlo Thomas</a>’ theatrical agent in the sitcom “That Girl” (1966-67) and a supporting role in the movie “With Six You Get Egg-Roll,” released in 1968.<br />By the end of the decade, he was one of America’s best known comedians. He made more than 80 major TV appearances during that time, including the <a title="" href="http://movies.nytimes.com/person/113209/Ed-Sullivan?inline=nyt-per">Ed Sullivan</a> Show and <a title="More articles about Johnny Carson." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/johnny_carson/index.html?inline=nyt-per">Johnny Carson</a>’s Tonight Show; he was also regularly featured at major nightclubs in New York and Las Vegas.<br />That early success and celebrity, however, was as dinky and hollow as a gratuitous pratfall to Mr. Carlin. “I was entertaining the fathers and the mothers of the people I sympathized with, and in some cases associated with, and whose point of view I shared,” he recalled later, as quoted in the book “Going Too Far” by <a title="More articles about Tony Hendra." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/tony_hendra/index.html?inline=nyt-per">Tony Hendra</a>, which was published in 1987. “I was a traitor, in so many words. I was living a lie.”<br />In 1970, Mr. Carlin discarded his suit, tie, and clean-cut image as well as the relatively conventional material that had catapulted him to the top. Mr. Carlin reinvented himself, emerging with a beard, long hair, jeans and a routine that, according to one critic, was steeped in “drugs and bawdy language.” There was an immediate backlash. The Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas terminated his three-year contract, and, months later, he was advised to leave town when an angry mob threatened him at the Lake Geneva Playboy Club. Afterward, he temporarily abandoned the nightclub circuit and began appearing at coffee houses, folk clubs and colleges where he found a younger, hipper audience that was more attuned to both his new image and his material.<br />By 1972, when he released his second album, ”FM & AM,” his star was again on the rise. The album, which won a Grammy Award as best comedy recording, combined older material on the “AM” side with bolder, more acerbic routines on the “FM” side. Among the more controversial cuts was a routine euphemistically entitled “Shoot,” in which Mr. Carlin explored the etymology and common usage of the popular idiom for excrement. The bit was part of the comic’s longer routine <strong>“Seven Words That Can Never Be Said on Television,”</strong> which appeared on his third album “Class Clown,” also released in 1972.<br />“There are some words you can say part of the time. Most of the time ‘ass’ is all right on television,” Mr. Carlin noted in his introduction to the then controversial monologue. “You can say, well, ‘You’ve made a perfect ass of yourself tonight.’ You can use ass in a religious sense, if you happen to be the redeemer riding into town on one — perfectly all right.”<br />The material seems innocuous by today’s standards, but it caused an uproar when broadcast on the New York radio station WBAI in the early seventies. The station was censured and fined by the FCC. And in 1978, their ruling was supported by the <a title="More articles about the U.S. Supreme Court." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/supreme_court/index.html?inline=nyt-org">Supreme Court</a>, which Time magazine reported, “upheld an FCC ban on ’offensive material’ during hours when children are in the audience.” Mr. Carlin, refused to drop the bit and was arrested several times after reciting it on stage.<br />Mr. Carlin released a half dozen comedy albums during the ’70s, including the million-record sellers “Class Clown,” “Occupation: Foole” (1973) and “An Evening With Wally Lando” (1975). He was chosen to host the first episode of the late-night comedy show <a title="More articles about the Saturday Night Live." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/saturday_night_live/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">“Saturday Night Live”</a> in 1975. And two years later, he found the perfect platform for his brand of acerbic, cerebral, sometimes off-color standup humor in the fledgling, less restricted world of cable television. By 1977, when his first <a title="More articles about HBO." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/home_box_office_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org">HBO</a> comedy special, “George Carlin at USC” was aired, he was recognized as one of the era’s most influential comedians. In the years following his 1977 cable debut, Mr. Carlin was nominated for a half dozen Grammy awards and received CableAces awards for best stand-up comedy special for “George Carlin: Doin’ It Again (1990) and “George Carlin: Jammin’” (1992). He also won his second Grammy for the album ”Jammin’” in 1994.<br />During the course of his career, Mr. Carlin overcame numerous personal trials. His early arrests for obscenity (all of which were dismissed) and struggle to overcome his self-described “heavy drug use” were the most publicized. But in the ’80s he also weathered serious tax problems, a heart attack and two open heart surgeries. His greatest setback was the loss of his wife, Brenda Hosbrook, who died in 1997. They had been married for 36 years. Mr. Carlin is survived by wife, Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law, Bob McCall; older brother, Patrick Carlin; sister-in-law, Marlene Carlin and long time manager, business partner and best friend Jerold Hamza. - Mel Watkins, NYTimes</div>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12299891.post-53887619518094455712008-06-21T22:41:00.009-04:002008-06-21T23:38:15.007-04:00Democrats Capitulate to Bush Once Again<em>The Democrats have now exposed their craven capitulation to the Bush/Cheney unitary executive; all they have to do now is click their heels and salute. This action alone should seal the deal they are as corrupt for not protecting and standing FOR the Constitution. The Senate has yet to vote, but the horrific Hoyer/Bush FISA Bill is expected to vote, and it's not even close. Only if a Democrat is willing to filibuster it, perhaps Senator Russ Feingold. I believe should this bill pass, the republic has indeed hit a tipping point, that will be difficult at best to see restored. -MS</em> <div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuyYbz2tbucgBhb6L5CgElp9Ia8RSylcjD_Ufj2G1CAlvqKbqkzF20iLcQra3So8c815svqLBGg3Yc-sXJfBgCQd1PyofFma6uyVTPNiQdGePqzHXu2sv5RRfa9-J3lnDKxC9bGw/s1600-h/Pelosi+and+Reid.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214531585935632642" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuyYbz2tbucgBhb6L5CgElp9Ia8RSylcjD_Ufj2G1CAlvqKbqkzF20iLcQra3So8c815svqLBGg3Yc-sXJfBgCQd1PyofFma6uyVTPNiQdGePqzHXu2sv5RRfa9-J3lnDKxC9bGw/s400/Pelosi+and+Reid.jpg" border="0" /></a> House Speaker <strong>Nancy Pelosi</strong> claims that a key positive feature of the new wiretap "compromise" is that the bill reaffirms that the President must follow the law, even though the same bill virtually assures that no one will be held accountable for <strong>George W. Bush's</strong> violation of the earlier spying law.<br />In other words, in the guise of rejecting Bush's theories of an all-powerful presidency that is above the law, the Democratic leadership cleared the way for the President and his collaborators to evade punishment for defying the law.<br />So, why should anyone assume that the new legislative edict demanding that the President obey the law will get<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg-AWLzTdCAqH2IxRQiDXIEzr0XWsjr0aD4hNVF9Z57cZzejMi5rzAxhYOR-kTXsQyW6J0dqOvp1mB2OKXtXyiKUEv0_PqmN-iz8Ak7eM5FRJ7UK8mXdqHxTZvZBNPWUehldclbQ/s1600-h/bush_flipping_finger.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214531259339812770" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" height="220" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg-AWLzTdCAqH2IxRQiDXIEzr0XWsjr0aD4hNVF9Z57cZzejMi5rzAxhYOR-kTXsQyW6J0dqOvp1mB2OKXtXyiKUEv0_PqmN-iz8Ak7eM5FRJ7UK8mXdqHxTZvZBNPWUehldclbQ/s400/bush_flipping_finger.jpg" width="356" border="0" /></a> any more respect than the old one, which established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 as the "exclusive" means for authorizing electronic spying?<br />It wasn't that Bush and his team didn't understand the old law's language; they simply believed they could violate the law without consequence, under the radical theory that at a time of war - even one as vaguely defined as the "war on terror" - the President's powers trump all laws as well as the constitutional rights of citizens.<br />Essentially, Bush was betting that even if his warrantless wiretap program was disclosed - as it was in December 2005 - that he could trust his Republican congressional allies to protect him and could count on most Democrats not to have the guts to challenge him.<br />His bet proved to be a smart one. After the New York Times revealed the warrantless wiretaps 2½ years ago, Congress took no steps to hold Bush accountable. Before the 2006 elections, Pelosi declared that Bush's impeachment was "off the table."<br />Then, on the eve of the August 2007 recess, the Democratic-controlled Congress was stampeded into passing the "Protect America Act," which effectively legalized what Bush had already done and expanded his spying powers even more.<br />After that law was passed, U.S. news reports mostly parroted the White House claim that it "modernized" FISA and "narrowly" targeted overseas terror suspects who might call or e-mail their contacts in the United States.<br />However, it soon became clear that the law applied not just to terror suspects abroad who might communicate with Americans, but to anyone who is "reasonably believed to be outside the United <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh3o6z7mJfAmwtf4_OjQyHeJA0XvF2Mu8Gd-CAy4McaAi8f-b6goCc2g7XI1tHGQolSVW5xULf2cYQ59IyL0pb7Ymz_jpu5lb9eUvUhm8D9H0IxXRTh5KtCxGS0EzmeLXSqN05cQ/s1600-h/Bush+smirking.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214532103483309346" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh3o6z7mJfAmwtf4_OjQyHeJA0XvF2Mu8Gd-CAy4McaAi8f-b6goCc2g7XI1tHGQolSVW5xULf2cYQ59IyL0pb7Ymz_jpu5lb9eUvUhm8D9H0IxXRTh5KtCxGS0EzmeLXSqN05cQ/s400/Bush+smirking.jpg" border="0" /></a>States" and who might possess "foreign intelligence information," defined as anything that could be useful to U.S. foreign policy.<br />That meant that almost any American engaged in international commerce or dealing with foreign issues - say, a businessman in touch with a foreign subsidiary or a U.S. reporter sending an overseas story back to his newspaper - was vulnerable to warrantless intercepts approved on the say-so of two Bush subordinates, the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence.<br />Beyond the breathtaking scope of this new authority, the Bush administration also snuck in a clause that granted forward-looking immunity from lawsuits to communications service providers that assisted the spying.<br />That removed one of the few safeguards against Bush's warrantless wiretaps: the concern among service providers that they might be sued by customers for handing over constitutionally protected information without a warrant.<br />In short, the "Protect America Act" made warrantless surveillance legally cost free for a collaborating service provider, tilting the scales even further in favor of the government's spying powers.<br /><strong>Catching On</strong><br />A week after the "Protect America Act" was passed, the New York Times and the Washington Post published front-page stories explaining how the Bush administration had ambushed the Democrats.<br />Pressed up against the start of the August recess and the prospect of Republican taunts that Democrats were "soft on terror," the Democratic leaders abandoned earlier compromise proposals and accepted the more expansive law. Their one point of resistance was putting a February 2008 sunset provision into the law.<br />Still, the Democratic cave-in in August 2007 provoked an uproar among rank-and-file Democrats. Pelo<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisyxA5anPOrglprxoF6lI-fxTsAJtCc8kTmzR2CqgV3hnH04JLWyfa3CmCENZOG3mxuhuRBeBGncq8BtoI0b4mo69tTkfUQP3-e8X8mich8QvQpeTHh1DIS6S05PiWjHEZng5ZOQ/s1600-h/Rockeffer+pic.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214543695496894530" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" height="293" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisyxA5anPOrglprxoF6lI-fxTsAJtCc8kTmzR2CqgV3hnH04JLWyfa3CmCENZOG3mxuhuRBeBGncq8BtoI0b4mo69tTkfUQP3-e8X8mich8QvQpeTHh1DIS6S05PiWjHEZng5ZOQ/s400/Rockeffer+pic.jpg" width="197" border="0" /></a>si's office reported receiving more than 200,000 angry e-mails.<br />Stung by the reaction, House Democratic leaders balked at White House pressure to make even more concessions, including retroactive immunity for telecommunication companies that had collaborated with Bush's warrantless wiretaps in the years after the 9/11 attacks.<br />In February 2008, to the surprise of many observers, the Democratic leadership allowed the "Protect America Act" to lapse. Though Republicans attacked the Democrats as expected, the accusations seemed to have little political resonance.<br />Nevertheless, the Democratic leadership - behind <strong>Sen. Jay Rockefeller<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4LsbVYHwEr8ZQa5nx8lyz9vCa2wvhdZvZ8icZvR4FSgf0HdcnIQ-0tOChaSqzDUDTOEoMHjHh6K2LE0fU_AQchqYk3kkeKI7nav7uy2WnO0ySBbW422oS0PF2k2pd5-PqOvA2TA/s1600-h/Hoyer.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214543389059609394" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 297px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 220px" height="185" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4LsbVYHwEr8ZQa5nx8lyz9vCa2wvhdZvZ8icZvR4FSgf0HdcnIQ-0tOChaSqzDUDTOEoMHjHh6K2LE0fU_AQchqYk3kkeKI7nav7uy2WnO0ySBbW422oS0PF2k2pd5-PqOvA2TA/s400/Hoyer.jpg" width="296" border="0" /></a></strong>, D-West Virginia, and <strong>Rep. Steny Hoyer</strong>, D-Maryland - continued working on a compromise.<br />While the new version drops some of the more intrusive features of the "Protect America Act," such as allowing warrantless wiretaps of Americans outside the United States, the bill adds retroactive telecom immunity (only requiring the companies show they got a written order from the President).<br />The bill also would grant the administration emergency power to wiretap a target for up to one week before getting a warrant from the secret FISA court. But the bill bars the government from targeting a foreigner as a "back-door" way to spy on an American without a court warrant.<br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>"Capitulation"</strong> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9J3rYkvuCsVQAfUC-zINJ_MGsJ61EKQ2jpQLi_LsZLN3BBR8SRW-i11WWMJZMHqUnBBDNOlc58-WsU81miilSs0g6HQa6gx6xB4qpxcOqOQsc62a2cT43VvKWRwFgX5qdH5j_ww/s1600-h/Feingold.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214533407772901378" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9J3rYkvuCsVQAfUC-zINJ_MGsJ61EKQ2jpQLi_LsZLN3BBR8SRW-i11WWMJZMHqUnBBDNOlc58-WsU81miilSs0g6HQa6gx6xB4qpxcOqOQsc62a2cT43VvKWRwFgX5qdH5j_ww/s400/Feingold.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /></span><strong>Sen. Russell Feingold</strong>, D-Wisconsin, a strong constitutionalist, termed the new bill "not a compromise; it is a capitulation."<br />One of the bill's illusions would seem to be that the precedent of a President ignoring the FISA law and escaping any accountability can somehow be negated by restating what the original, violated law had declared.<br />In her June 20 floor statement, Pelosi said in her view this was a crucial feature of the bill, the statement that the President cannot ignore the FISA law again. However, Pelosi's position sounded like the words of an indulgent parent of a spoiled child: "This time I really mean it!"<br />The more powerful message from the latest Democratic compromise is that a President - at least a Republican one - can break the wiretap law under the cover of national security and expect to ride out the consequences.<br />Rather than reaffirming the rule of law and the Constitution's checks and balances, as Pelosi claimed, the new FISA "compromise" may have done the opposite, signaling that the President is above the law.<br />After Pelosi's speech, the House passed the bill by a 293-129 margin with 105 Democrats - including most of the leadership - voting in favor and 128 Democrats against. The bill then went to the Senate, which was expected to approve it.<br />--------<br />Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, "Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush," was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at <a href="http://neckdeepbook.com/" target="_blank">neckdeepbook.com</a>. His two previous books, "Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq" and "Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'" are also available there. </div></div>javafilmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728480570404242221noreply@blogger.com0