Film Review: Oscar Nominations Announced

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

by Eric Green

Each year, at 8:30am Eastern Standard Time and 5:30am, Pacific Time, the Academy announces their Oscars. Time stands still for the studios; all of the actors, directors, and everyone else associated with individual films; and filmgoers.

Like with previous nominating announcement the results are a strong mixture which doesn't make much sense. Afterall the voters are members of the Academy with varying interests. It would be nice to see the breakdown on their interests.

The Good

The Good in the Oscar nominations this year is the nominating of Mickey Rourke for his stellar performance in "The Wrestler." And, of course, the nomination of Sean Penn for "Milk." And, the other side, that Anne Hathaway, Angelina Jolle and Kate Winslet were nominagted for best actress in "Rachel Getting Married", "Changeling" and "The Reader, [and not Revolutionary Road]" respectively.

In the supporting category, Heath Ledger for "The Joker and Josh Brolin in "Milk;" and, Marisa Tomei, in the "Wrestler." It is a shame that Ledger's last performance wasn't in a leading role or as a director, a direction he was headed.

The Good news continues with the director of "Slumdog Millionaire," Danny Boyle being nominated as well as the directors of "Milk", Gus Van Zant, and "The Reader" Stephen Daldry.

Nominated in the best Foreign Language Film, the one entered by Israel, is the anti-war film, " Waltz with Bashir." The director and creator of this film, Ari Folman, has said that he is happy to be received accolades, like the Golden Globe Awards, but he hopes that people pay attention to the anti-war, and human suffering, message of the film.

The Best Picture category nominates the anti-Fascist, Anti-Nazi film, "The Reader" which was not expected in the official film reviewers' circles. But, the Good continues with the nominating of "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Milk."

Nominating two African American women in Best Supporting roles, Viola Davis in "Doubt" and Taraji P. Henson in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was well done.

The Bad News

The Bad news started with the snubbing of "The Wrestler" in the best film and best directing categories. Darren Aronofsky deserved the nomination.

The total snubbing of films like "Cadillac records," "Iron Man, " "Red Belt" and "Gran Torino" is unfortunate.

Jeffrey Wright worked in four films in 2008, but was left out completely from any nominations.

Bruce Springsteen's, original song, "The Wrestler," more than deserved nomination. Only three songs were nominated.

The film that I thought would get broad recognition was, "Synecdoche" the Charlie Kaufman film that featured Philip Seymour Hoffman. I was totally wrong. The film did not get even one nomination for any of the categories.

Neither Good Nor Bad

The dumping of "Revolutionary Road" for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" --- they seemed on the same "Hollywood" high publicity path is just noteworthy.

If "The Reader" does get the recognition is deserves, I can only hope that the discussion will focus on its anti-Fascist and anti-Nazi intent. Winslet's nomination for this film, one of many nominations, deserves the Oscar.

Comments to Look For

Oscar viewers are always looking for targeted comments from Oscar awardees. For example, if Winslet wins, will she comment on the purpose of her film? Also, will Folman's "Waltzing with Bashir's" creator and director, make some comments about peace in the Middle East if he wins?

Will any of the actors say something about the need for more diversity for these selections? Will they say something about the economic crisis filmmaking is and will be in for the next years?

It is said that there were 650 films made in 2008; but only about 450 are expected in a couple of years. Will this mean less opportunities to African-American, Latins and women actor and directors?

The entertainment industry must be included in the economy of our country. Just as the arts and humanities were included in the 1930s federal support. It made it possible for a whole generation of culture workers to be borne; it should be done today. Any federal support cannot be given over to the big industry studios, on the contrary. There is enough truly independent filmmaker to allow them to document the growing suffering taking place across our country. And, allow these workers to document the suffering across our northern and southern borders. This message given on Oscar's night would be well received in that audience and across the country.

The international film world, tuning in across the world, would also give a collective support.

Film Review Synecdoche

And You Thought You Had Problems

by Eric Green

So what does the word Synecdoche mean? The simple translation is that it is a metaphor for accepting a part of the responsibility for something.*

Well Charlie Kaufman's film by the same name could be summed up that, "All Life is a Metaphor."

Filmgoers like me should have been forewarned that any film effort by Kaufman would not be a normal day at the movies. His previous films like "Being John Malkovich," "Adaptation"; and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" were brilliantly created and directed. In 2004 Time Magazine named Kaufman as one of the top 100 most influential writers. That meant his current film had to be seen.

Kaufman starts out his film by giving a sense of comfort. He begins the film with a rather normal looking university theater professor, Caden Cotard, played by Seymour Philip Hoffman, taking his class and theatre troop through the final stages of another comforting event, that is, a production of "Death of a Salesman."

So far so good.

Then Kaufman brings in Hoffman's family life with the comforting presence of his wife, Adele, played by Catherine Keener. We know her and trust her. We see their 4-year old daughter, Olive, played by Sadie Goldstein. We have seen Keener in many films, but many theatergoers have seen her acting in "Being John Malkovich."

We see that Hoffman has a number of medical, physical and mental, problems, both real and imagined. And, we see that Keener is totally happy with her life; and, Hope Davis, their marriage counseling therapist appears to help the couple surpass, what seemed like normal, easily overcome problems.

That is when all hell breaks looks.

For the next two hours, we have Samantha Morton, a hired ticket salesperson at the theatre, tempting Hoffman, just before and during Keener and their 4 year old, flee the country to Germany. Jennifer Jason Leigh enables her in that trek.

And, then Hoffman wins a genius award from the Macarthur Foundation, and he heads off to New York City, to make sure that he uses that Award in the most effective way.

There we find Michelle Williams. Time moves ahead and she has entered Cotard's life both as part of his theatrical world and then as his new wife and father of a child. But, that doesn't end there by a long shot.

Cotard makes trips to Germany trying to find Adele, but more importantly, his daughter, Olive.

Emily Watson another British actor arrives, Morton is also British, and plays a major role in Hoffman's tortured life.

Out of the blue, so to speak, Diane Wiest, the well-known US actress, picks up Cotard life when most other women die or disappear.

The production that Cotard develops moves between real life and wild nitemarish dreams. There is a large city set within a gigantic film studio which also mimicks life.

In case you think that it is only a bevy of wonderfully talented women actors who are surrounding Cotard's life, Tom Noon, plays a key role in playing the role of Cotard. And, Jerry Adler plays the role of Cotard's father.

At one point, Weist asks permissionto play a non-traditional perforance by also playing Cotard. Cotard agrees.

Oscar's

The closest that this film got to being nominated for the 2008 Oscar's was Hoffman's nomination for his performance in the film "Doubt." That's right, not one nomination for this amazing film.

That might be a slight bright spot. The level of this film being a true "downer" cannot be underestimated. I worried for Hoffman acting this role. He has performed many challenging roles, but none as demanding as this one.

Remember the old adage, "What could go wrong, Will go Wrong." Well, with this film, the adage should be adjusted to be, "What could go wrong; will not only go wrong, but will go as far wrong as the mind could possibly imagine."

There are many people I know who should NOT see this film. It is just too heavy to endure.

For people genuinely interested in filmmaking creativity and then the actual production with hugely talented actors, this film cannot be missed.

You may have to use your NetFlix, use it.

Kaufman has shown humor in his films, but the only humor in this film is that the horrendous life experiences that Cotard endures makes you smile for all the wrong reasons.

This film deserved recognition and it will get it.

Well this film is trying a creative effort.

* Wikipedia helps us understand the word: The word "synecdoche" is derived from the Greek συνεκδοχή, from the prepositions συν- + εκ- and the verb -δέχομαι (accept), meaning originally the acceptance of a part of the responsibility for something.

Synecdoche is closely related to metonymy (the figure of speech in which a term denoting one thing is used to refer to a related thing); indeed, synecdoche is considered a subclass of metonymy. It is more distantly related to other figures of speech, such as metaphor.
More rigorously, metonymy and synecdoche may be considered as sub-species of metaphor, intending metaphor as a type of conceptual substitution (as Quintilian does in Institutio oratoria Book VIII). In Lanham's Handlist of Rhetorical Terms p. 189 the three terms have somewhat restrictive definitions, arguably in tune with a certain interpretation of their etymologies from Greek:
metaphor: changing a word from its literal meaning to one not properly applicable but analogous to it; assertion of identity rather than, as with simile, likeness.
metonymy: substitution of cause for effect, proper name for one of its qualities, etc.
synecdoche: substitution of a part for whole, species for genus, etc.

ecdoche

Surge Dirge and Withdrawal From Iraq

Thomas Riggins

I am tired of hearing right wing pundits taking about the “success of the surge” and that the only reason “liberals” dislike W is because he was right about Iraq and about the surge working. The truth is we pumped money into the Sunni militias we were fighting and enticed them over to our side (in the old days it was called "paying tribute,”) but they have no loyalty to us at all.

The Shia militias have not been defeated nor disbanded but are laying low to see what happens next. The so called “success” could explode in the face of the U.S. at any moment. That’s not just my opinion. Ryan Crocker the U.S. Ambassador in Iraq [until February when he will be replaced] is quoted in the Wall Street Journal [1-23-09] as saying, “Anything can happen. That’s why my mantra has been that things are still fragile and still reversible.”

“Still reversible” means that massive cilvil conflict can break out again if the Iraqis don’t like how the U.S. and its dependent government are running the show. Most Iraqis want us out and the sooner the better. Obama says it will take 16 months. Crocker warns against “a precipitous withdrawal.” There is nothing “precipitous” about 16 months.

Sweden’s Fix for Banks: Nationalize Them

The New York Times
January 23, 2009
Sweden’s Fix for Banks: Nationalize Them

By CARTER DOUGHERTY

The Swedes have a simple message to the Americans: Bite the bullet and nationalize.

Officials in Washington are trying to figure out how to shore up American banks that once ruled the financial world but now seem to weaken by the day, despite receiving hundreds of billions of dollars in government aid.

With Sweden’s banks effectively bankrupt in the early 1990s, a center-right government pulled off a rapid recovery that led to taxpayers making money in the long run.

Former government officials in Sweden, many of whom come from the market-oriented end of the political spectrum, say the only way to solve the crisis in the United States is for the government to be prepared to temporarily take full ownership of the banks.

Read the whole story here...

Ultra-right Media Already Going Bonkers

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Fox News Fear Imbalance

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

A battle over what happened in Gaza

From the LA Times:

Human rights groups say Israel may have committed war crimes. Israeli officials deny the charges, saying every effort was made to minimize civilian casualties.

By Jeffrey Fleishman
January 23, 2009

Reporting from Jerusalem — The graves are dug, the wounded tended, but the battle over what happened in the Gaza Strip during Israel's 22-day offensive remains unfinished.

International organizations, citing videos and witnesses, say Israel may have committed war crimes in Gaza's villages and city alleys. The Israel Defense Forces deny such allegations, issuing their own video clips and assessments.

Ninety-four percent of Israelis supported the campaign to stop Hamas from its long- standing practice of indiscriminately firing hundreds of rockets a week into southern Israel. Human rights organizations say the Palestinian militant group's targeting of towns such as Sderot and Ashkelon also constitutes war crimes, as does the practice by Hamas leaders, regarded by the West and a number of Arab countries as terrorists, of using civilians as human shields.

The legal implications of the deaths of at least 1,300 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians, will be debated, with much of the wrangling likely to concern such issues as proportionality, targeting and how careful efforts to not harm the innocent can go horribly wrong when tank shells stray from their coordinates.

Moral questions also linger among Israeli peace activists troubled by the relative lack of public introspection over the destruction and civilian deaths wrought by their army's immense firepower during the fighting in the cramped territory. They say Hamas' abuses do not erase Israel's responsibility for such incidents as the shelling of a United Nations school that killed dozens of civilians sheltered there. Even if Hamas had to be weakened, they wonder how their nation, where memories of the Holocaust are so thoroughly embedded, could look past the plight of 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in a dense war zone they couldn't escape.

"We are witnessing a moral corrosion that is destroying everything at a fantastic pace," said Michael Sfard, a lawyer with Volunteers for Human Rights in Tel Aviv. "We've reached a threshold of insensitivity that we had never reached in the past."

The offensive "on Gaza may be squeezing Hamas, but it is destroying Israel," Ari Shavit wrote in the left-leaning Haaretz in the days before the operation ended. "Destroying its soul and its image. Destroying it on world television screens, in the living rooms of the international community and most importantly, in Obama's America."

"Wars must be just and proportional," he continued. "Without being just, Israel cannot triumph on the battlefield."

Hamas' incessant rocket attacks and its decision to not renew a six-month cease-fire in early December, after Israel did not end its 18-month blockade of Gaza, allowed Israel to dwell less on second-guessing the consequences of the military operation.

Even as its troops withdrew this week, Israel echoed with resolve over what was hailed as a just mission in an endless conflict punctuated by air raid sirens and suicide bombers. This is a nation, after all, that has faced the rise of Hamas, the 2006 war with the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon and bellicose rhetoric from an Iran accused of pursuing nuclear weapons.

Twenty-eight Israelis have been killed in rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza since 2001, Israeli officials say.

Suggestions that Israeli forces may have committed human rights violations have led to new government restrictions on soldiers. To prevent military officers from being named in potential war crimes or human rights lawsuits, the government will allow officers to be interviewed on TV only if their names are withheld and their faces blurred.

"The government will stand like a fortified wall to protect each and every one of you from allegations of disrupting the moral [equation]," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reportedly told his military officers and commanders. "If such a disruption exists, it is actually what is being directed against us: For seven years the world was against rocket fire on Israel, but didn't lift a finger."

More than previous Middle East military campaigns, and the round-the-clock public relations efforts, this battle was accentuated by technology. Palestinians with cellphone cameras documented bomb blasts and surrender flags; Israel Defense Forces soldiers were ordered to film firefights as evidence to later rebut any war crimes charges.

"I think the feeling of many Israelis is that Gaza's behind a wall and it's not my responsibility," said Haim Yacobi, co-founder of Planners for Planning Rights, a group of engineers and architects promoting human rights. "It's the politics of fear. Israeli politicians are using it as a very effective mechanism. It has to do with the dehumanization of Palestinians in Gaza."

Israel, however, found itself on the public relations defensive, based on sheer numbers if nothing else. Whereas at least 1,300 Palestinians were reported killed, including 410 children and more than 100 women, Israel said 13 of its citizens died, 10 of them soldiers.

Human Rights Watch and other groups allege that Israel's tactics for achieving a military advantage in Gaza led to disproportionate death and suffering of a civilian population that was denied medical care, refuge and electricity, especially in the urban warfare in and around Gaza City.

"Gaza became a kind of free fire zone for the Israelis," said Fred Abrahams, senior emergencies researcher for Human Rights Watch.

The Israeli army saw a different picture: Guerrillas vanishing into tunnels, popping up for ambushes, then slipping into civilian populations and firing rockets that were edging closer to Tel Aviv. It was as if Hamas had used Gaza as a dense, sprawling human shield to hide its militants, including its leaders, who Israeli officials said used a bunker beneath a hospital as their headquarters. With such a panorama, Israeli officials say, civilian casualties were not intentional, but they were unavoidable.

Shortly after announcing the cease-fire Saturday, Olmert said Israel regretted "the loss of civilian life among the citizens of Gaza who were not involved in terror and served as hostages for the murders of Hamas. We did not fight against them; we did not wish to harm them or their children or their parents or their siblings."

Yet moral and legal questions surround the Jan. 6 Israeli shelling of a school run by the United Nations Relief Works Agency in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinians had sought shelter there. The Israeli military says it encountered mortar rounds coming from the school and returned fire. The U.N. said that 42 civilians died and that no militants fired from the compound.

John Ging, the senior U.N. official in Gaza, who has called for an independent inquiry on possible war crimes, said Israel's claims are "unfounded and unsubstantiated. . . . That's been the position with all these cases. They just throw this excuse out there."

Human rights groups have asked the Israeli attorney general's office to investigate military actions that allegedly included the shooting of ambulance workers, the blocking of humanitarian aid and the targeting of civilian houses and government buildings. The Israeli military is looking into whether its forces properly used phosphorus artillery shells. The weapons, which cause severe burns, are not illegal but they are banned from use in heavily populated areas.

While the legal issues are parsed, Israeli intellectuals are engaged in stinging word battles. Novelist A.B. Yehoshua and prominent liberal journalist Gideon Levy have penned open letters to each other.

"We are not bent on killing Palestinian children to avenge the killing of our children," Yehoshua wrote in Haaretz. "All we are trying to do is get their leaders to stop this senseless and wicked aggression."

Two days later, Levy responded to Yehoshua, saying the novelist had "fallen prey to the wretched wave that has inundated, stupefied, blinded and brainwashed us. You're actually justifying the most brutal war Israel has ever fought. . . . Outcomes, not intentions, are what count -- and those have been horrendous."

Support the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

From AFL-CIO:

To rebuild our economy, we need to quickly and aggressively make a major investment in our country. We must create jobs and invest in renewable energy, energy efficiency, transportation, schools and health care. We also must invest in America's families and the nation's workforce by ensuring that states can fund the services they depend on, including health care, public safety and education.

That is why President Obama, together with leaders in Congress, has proposed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. But some members of Congress are seeking to stop this critical legislation. We can’t allow Congress to sit idly by while millions of Americans lose their jobs and homes.

Your voice is critical. Tell Congress to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act now.

A people's inaugural

by Joe Sims
From People's Weekly World Newspaper

Huge crowds, unprecedented in U.S. history, gathered in Washington on Tuesday, to celebrate and welcome President Barack Obama to the White House. Pre-inaugural estimates of up to 3 million participants seemed on mark, with newspapers like the Washington Post calculating 2 million people on the Mall.

With many participants both with and without tickets unable to gain entry, the overall numbers are likely higher. “I had tickets and couldn’t get in,” said a New York City teacher whose story was echoed by many others.” We got here early but it was just too big.” Her family managed to watch President Obama’s speech at Union Station.

“You have to conceptualize this as a populist inauguration,” said political analyst, University of Maryland professor and long-time activist Ron Walters to the Washington Afro-American. “You have people coming here from all over the world; people coming from across the country – many bunking in with relatives – just because they want to be a part of history.”

Read the whole story here...

A Black in the White House: Would the world start to change?

A few weeks ago, we could see on TV a little grandmother ovationned, brought to arm's length by the inhabitants of her village in the depths of Kenya; his small son had just been elected ... President of the United States of America.
On that day, everywhere in the world, people cried out with joy, concerts were organised, to welcome the election of Barak Hussein Obama : across the Southern states in the USA, but also in Africa (for example in Kenya), , in occupied Palestine, in Latin America, in China...
At home, progressists could not remain indifferent to such an important event in the history of USA, a superpower which dominates our entire planet, directly or indirectly.. Some have responded with great condescension or contempt to this popular jubilation: 'They will be disappointed ! What an illusion ! "... Others were simply delighted. We were among them.
Of course, Obama represents the two-party system which locks the "democracy" in the U.S.A .Of course, he comes from a bourgeois party, alter-ego of the Republican Party, and its program hardly differs from the one of his main opponent Mc Cain. Of course, his black skin was a tactical excuse for the Democratic Party, which played then an important card for these elections. Besides, this election has absolutely nothing to do with a political revolution, unlike what happened with the elections of Hugo Chavez or Evo Morales ... especially because he is the candidate of the big U.S. owners who spent a fortune for his campaign !
The Communists never support a "providential man" who magically induces confidence, but the political expression at a time of the change in power relations, more favorable to the people’s struggles, even if they’re fleeting. Relatively speaking of course, it is not because Leon Blum was one of the gravediggers of the Popular Front in France in 1938, that we should not support him in 1936 during the rise of this front.

96% of black Americans, (many of them were added to the electoral roll for the occasion), 67% of Latinos, many of the white "middle class" jeopardised by the crisis, but also some white racists from the traditional Republican electorate, exasperated by the endless mandate of Bush gave a very clear majority to Obama, in a country that lived few decades ago, under an horrible regime of apartheid...
Against a U.S. bourgeoisie whose history is made of class oppression and racial discrimination, the heroic Civil Rights Movement, started in the 60s here, marked a further and decisive step, which would probably have been welcome by our fellow Afro-American Bolsheviks such as Harry Haywood...

This vote is also a strong signal in the class struggles within the U.S., and the support of Obama by the Communist Party of the U.S.A against the bloody Mac "GI" Cain, has nothing to do with opportunism. Rejection of occupation wars, rejection of unsustainable health system, rejection of liberticidal laws, rejection of capitalism’s crisis consequences; so many reasons to express that the American people is fed up with Bush and his administration.

This election is also celebrated beyond the USA. Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, leaders of progressive countries that have been suffering for such a long time from the imperialist domination of the arrogant U.S.A has welcomed this great victory and the departure of Bush. Objectively, the mere fact that the U.S. bourgeoisie is forced to propose a black president is significant of a change in their political tactics, forcing a weakening in more "flexibility", at least in a first time. This tactical change is not only related to the acceleration of the crisis of capitalism, undermining today ‘s imperialist centers themselves, but also to a new context at the international level, where dominated people are beginning to stand up and restore hope that everyone used to believe lost. The history of struggles turns a dark page of a unipolar world, and announces a "multipolar" world, therefore more fragile towards the socialist revolution for which we fight! When people who believed in the electoral victory of Obama experience its objective limits, they will fight with more and more determination more and more io take their destiny in hand!

Rally of Communists Circles (RCC), France, November 2008

http://www.rassemblementcommuniste.org

rcc@rassemblementcommuniste.org

You can read the pamphlet published by the Henri Barbusse Circle "A Black elected President of the United States of America, a new stage in the struggle for equal rights!" by going to our website or by ordering the paper version by email.

What happend to me on the way to the Inaugural

By Joe Sims

When walking down 34th street to pick up train tickets to the Washington Inauguration on Monday, MLK Day, I heard someone shout out the N word. Looking up it turned out to be a white person yelling it at another white person. Really! Enraged, bitter, full of hate, the man spit the word out in the course of several other obscenities. Initially I thought I heard him wrong, but then, he said it again! “That’s a first,” I muttered resisting the urge to scream out F-you in response while still within shouting distance. “No, not today” I appealed to my better angel, but then immediately felt ashamed at not saying anything.

“What’s gotten into you?’ I argued with myself going below ground into the lobby adjacent to the Amtrak ticketing section. But then, stepping off the elevator, I heard the word again, this time said jokingly, by two young people at first glance of indeterminate race working behind a donut counter. They could have been Asian, Arab, Latino, perhaps even African American, definitely people of color, but of a hue difficult to easily or quickly place in this increasingly multi-cultural morass called New York.

This time, though there was no surprise: one of the unfortunate by-products of hip hop culture (which ironically played an enormously understated role in getting Barack Obama elected president) is the easy and frequent use of the N word in urban street discourse.

I just couldn’t get away from it - and this on the day celebrating Martin Luther King’s life and legacy.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Not long after Election Day, a group of young thugs from Bensonhurst, enraged by Obama’s victory, went out with baseball bats searching for easy victims. In fact, after the November success, hate crimes were up, as were gun sales despite the economic hardship spreading across the land. Victory at times can be more dangerous than defeat, proving vigilance is neglected at everyone’s peril.

I was surprised therefore to read Monday morning of a King celebration in San Francisco where a pastor suspended the traditional King march in favor of an in-door program, emphasizing the celebratory quality of the moment, claiming now is not the time to protest.

“Was that appropriate?” I wondered with mixed feelings, knowing full well that The Dream while drawing closer remains far in the distance for most. On the one hand, appropriateness of time and place is an issue. Part of me understood the minister’s bent of mind and the desire to give pause and praise the moment. Surely, the millions who assembled on the Washington Mall on Tuesday came not in protest but in jubilee celebration of what for most was a Juneteenth moment, a joyful collective shout of huge accomplishment and Yes We Can, a positive affirmation of love for everything that is great and wonderful in America.

But as if I needed a reminder, here as I went to celebrate was an epithet of genocide, torture and hate tossed now with brine at a white person no less, and then a moment later, easily and with a laugh on a sacred day of reverence and memory, on the eve of a history none of us ever dreamed.

Take a pause for the cause? Maybe But the body that breeds hatred and despair seems never to rest and when set back can grow even more dangerous.

Yes a great and wide plateau has been reached, but the mountain still looms. Today we celebrate: tomorrow we march.

Obama acts on his Progressive Promises

by Norman Markowitz

Whatever was happening on Wall Street, this was a good day in the life of the United States of America. President Obama did something politicians in the U.S. particularly are not distinguished for doing. He promptly kept his word on some of his campaign promises.

The president signed an executive order closing Guantanamo and abolishing the CIA's "secret prisons" abroad which have disgraced the U.S. in the eyes of the world's people. He also banned the use of the torture techniques under interrogation that the Bush administration both practiced and defended. The order was signed in a ceremony with a group of retired admirals and generals who campaigned for it--those no longer under military discipline but with the understanding that these policies had brought the military itself into disrepute. The order also specifically calls upon U.S. authorities to make sure that the prisons in which detainees are held conform to Geneva Convention standards, whereas the Bush administration had denied that the Geneva Convention really covered much of anything in its "war against terrorism."

While the CIA will continue its activities(hopefully not using bureaucratic means to circumvent the order as J. Edgar Hoover did to executive orders he didn't like) and prisoners will still be taken and interrogated, this is a big step away from the abuses of water boarding, rendition, subcontracting torture to third party nations, that Americans have become so accustomed to that they are regularly themes on television drama and action adventure series.

President Obama also put a rapid end to the conflict in Iraq on the table as a major priority for his administration.

Finally, in an act applauded by animal rights supporters (including myself) the Obama administration issued a memo halting a screwball Bush administration maneuver that would remove grey wolves from the Endangered Species Act in the Northern Rockies, except for Wyoming, which, I guess, rightwingers would contend that the superior wolves would then enter, thus upgrading the grey wolf population. Unfortunately, the Bush administration, in a parting shot, was able to file and publish last minute regulations which not only undermine the Endangered Species Act but which threaten the environment, including provisions that allow mining deposits to be dumped within 100 feet of flowing streams and exempt agribusiness farms from having to notify public officials when they release unsafe levels of toxic emissions into communities. Earth Justice, an environmental rights public interest law group, is suing on these and other last minute Bush maneuvers. Hopefully, the Obama administration will support the suits.

In his inaugural address, President Obama used some words from an old roadway song when he said, "we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin the work of remaking America." As in the entire speech, his tone was measured and practical. These first acts against those who under Bush violated human rights in the name of "national security" and those who as always deny that there is such a thing as animal rights and welfare or environmental issues that restrict business profit are steps in the direction of remaking American policy, without which one cannot remake America as a civilization.

Is Sen. Jim DeMint an idiot?

He may be. I turned on C-SPAN to watch a little of the debate on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which should pass today and would help people who experience wage and hiring discrimination to seek redress.

DeMint opposes the bill. But he is offering an amendment to the bill that would create a National Right to Work Law, which is an attack on unions and workers and their ability to collectively bargain for better wages and benefits.

Though his amendment will be defeated here in a minute or two, his logic is painfully silly. He is attaching an amendment to a bill he opposes. Hypothetically, let's say his amendment passed. He would then vote to defeat a bill that carries his amendment; or he would vote for a bill he opposes just to pass his silly amendment?

Aside from the fact that his amendment has nothing to do with pay discrimination and that his actions are ludicrous, DeMint's actions suggest he is simply dishonest and wasting taxpayer dollars forcing the Senate to consider such nonsense.

Salmonella in Peanut Butter?

Salmonella is an intestinal organism that originally breeds in the guts of livestock. How can it get into peanut butter?

Film Review: Notorious

Film Review: "Notorious"
Brooklyn Rap on Inauguration Day

by Eric Green

Somehow it was poetic justice to watch "Notorious" on the same day as watching the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States. And, watching the film in a Brooklyn theatre where Notorious B.I.G. was well known to the almost, 4pm, full house audience; that made the film experience even more important.

A Family Affair

The incredible part of the film is the involvement of so many people who were close to the lead character, Christopher Wallace, aka, Notorious B.I.G; or as he was professionally known, Biggie Small.

The film was a creation of a major figure in the Hip Hop world, Sean "Puffy" Combs, and the mother of the lead character, Voletta Wallace. In the film the great Angela Bassett played Voletta Wallace. Wallace was, and is, a middle strata Jamaican woman who gained her graduate degree during the course of her son's brief life.

His real life son, Christopher Jordan Wallace, whose mother is, the singer, Faith Evens, the only love interest that B.I.G. married, played the 8-13 year old Christopher Wallace. In his short 24 years, he fathered two children. Antoinette Smith plays Evans.

The director of film, George Tillman, Jr., previously directed, Men of Honor, a film in which he directed icons of Hollywood, Robert DeNiro, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Charlize Theron. This film was probably a more challenging directing effort since he had to direct a brand new crew of actors and actresses in a film which he had to deal with highly difficult, super charged event in music industry, that is, the era of the Gangster Rap---the 1990s.

Tillman made it possible for Jamal Woolard a Rap singer, but new actor to play this lead role and steering him to accurately portray this music icon was a great job.

Was this film an accurate description of that period, or just one that Combs and Mrs. Wallace wanted to portray? Did the writers Reggie Rock Bythewood and Cheo Hodair Coker get it right?

Well, the film certainly had the feel of an accurate film effort. And, by seeing the responses to the film they seemed to have done a great job.

One key figure in that rough, mostly male world was, and is, Lil Kim a Brooklyn singer who had a love relationship to B.I.G. Naturi Naughton played Lil Kim. [Naughton is an honor student at Seton Hall University in New Jersey where she majors in Political Science.] She was amazing and could have stolen the show. Her singing, emotions and physical dimension made her Lil Kim. That Lil Kim is still alive and singing probably made this all the more difficult.

East Coast West Coast

I have to make a clear disclaimer. I know almost nothing about the Rap, in this case, Brooklyn Rap period, with its music and artists. I watched like many others the tragic outcome of the infamous deadly fight between the West Coast singers; lead in part by the murdered icon Tupac Shakur and the East Coast lead, in part, by B.I.G.

Sean "Puffy" Combs is credited with discovering B.I.G. and plays a key role throughout the film. He is well played by Derek Luke..

The raw depiction of those events didn't pull any punches. Sometimes it was hard to watch. Sort of reminded me of "The Wrestler" in that regard.

The Records

B.I.G.'s released two albums. The first "Ready to Die" in 1994; and, the second was released two days after he was killed, in 1997, "Life After Death." The latter record has grossed over $10 million. During the film Christopher Wallace performed the songs and many in the audience sang along; yes, an old fashion sing-a-long.

Obama and Cosby

Both President Barak Obama and actor, Bill Cosby, will probably see this film…they should. They are both highly concerned and have voiced that concern about the abandonment of children fathered by Black men. This film has that dimension, but on more than one occasion, the writers, directors and actors made it clear toward the end of the film, that changing the typical reality had to take place. B.I.G. seemed to be moving in that direction before he was killed.

In one poignant scene, h told his daughter, after cursing out a woman, using the "B" word liberally, that she should never allow a man to call her that "B" word. He used the full word in both instances.

This is a crude, difficult film to see, but it is a must see. The interplay between the street drug industry and the music industry is well put. Both are seen as making a living when no other good jobs are immediately available.

The cinematography of the film was very different, but very well done. The Brooklyn scenes were clear and to the point. The Brooklyn Bridge never looked so good.

This film shows that the struggle ahead and avenues for change won't be easy, but that road will be traveled.

Could this film been made better? The better question would be did Tillman and everyone else associated with the film do a good, if not very good, job in fitting the short, but life filled life of Christopher Wallace into a 2-hour film time frame? I vote yes.

In the closing credits, each of the main characters of the era is shown both in their real photos and the actors who played them. This was very well done.

NOTE: Lastly, Christopher Wallace kept a close relationship with his mother. He is seen congratulating her on her successful college; and, in her struggle against breast cancer. When Voletta tells him that she has breast cancer, he tells a close friend and is overwhelmed with fear for her future. His friend told him that his mother died of breast cancer. Public health and medical people familiar with this breast cancer know that the prevalence of breast cancer among Black woman is well above all other sections of women.

Obama's Inaugeral: A little Rain on a Great Parade

by Norman Markowitz

Barack Obama's speech yesterday was both eloquent and well within the the progressive tradition that he represents in both foreign and domestic policy. But on the first day of his presidency he should be called on one thing very strongly.

"Recall," he said, "that earlier generations faced down fascism and Communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions." That is a sad bit of cold war boiler plate very much at odds with the rest of the speech and of course a falsification of history. Those are pretty strong statements, but a president elected as an agent of progressive change has no reason to revive one of the big lies of the cold war era, i.e., Fascism=Communism=Totalitarianism. From there it is a hop skip and small jump to portraying universal health care as "creeping socialism" and passing the Taft-Harley law on anti-Communist principles.

Communist and for that matter fascist racist ideologies and movements are part of the American political tradition, with Communists playing a substantial role in bringing about the kind of change that Obama appealed to his his campaign. Fascists on the other hand have always sought to organize the United States as a racist militarist state, one which would have at the very least imprisoned his mother and father for daring to have him. If one talks about "sturdy alliances," the crucial for human history alliance between the U.S. and the USSR defeated the fascist Axis in the Second World War, and saved the world from the domination of Hitler-fascism and the Japanese militarist imperialism. The NAT0, SEAT0, Baghdad Pact, and other cold war
alliances claimed the lives directly of over 100,000 Americans and a minimum of five million Indochinese and Koreans and indirectly tens of millions of others.

The enduring convictions that Obama speaks about have been represented by progressives, radicals and revolutionaries throughout U.S. history, by abolitionists persecuted for their anti-slavery activities in the decades before the civil war and by socialists and especially Communists persecuted for their anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist activities through the 20th century. If one is to speak concretely about enduring convictions that represent the building of a just society, then Communists and Communism in the U.S. stand in the forefront of that tradition. The survival and ongoing struggle of the CPUSA particularly is evidence to those enduring convictions.

If President Obama wishes to build a new politics in the U.S. he must break with such empty phrases and shibboleths of the past that gave us Ronald Reagan and George W Bush , as the people who elected him broke with the deforming racist ideology that has in varying degrees permeated U.S. history. Echoes of old-fashioned red-baiting have no place in "change" that the people of the U.S. and the world can believe in, except perhaps in the those media defined "red states" in the U.S. and other strongholds of reaction which are diametrically opposed to such change.

I will get back to other parts of Obama's speech, which was, in my opinion, in its entirety the best from a post WWII President in its articulation of both a progressive vision at home and abroad and a way out of what has been thirty years of reaction. But when the President goes backward rather than forward, as he did in and through those words equating Communism with Fascism, he should be called on it, for his and the peoples sake.

P.S. The NYT is reporting that Chinese media "censored" the specific anti-Communist statement in the translation of the speech. I wouldn't have done that, but I were a Chinese person with any influence over Chinese media I would have responded to it with strong critical commentary on Chinese television, to make it clear that policies of cooperation and peace cannot be based on the ideological abuses of the past, which were used to justify in the case of China alone an attempted U.S. economic blockade until the 1970s, the blocking of China's seating in the UN until the early 1970s, and support for provocations along China's borders and in the Formosa Strait that almost led to a major war, actions that implemented the "enduring convictions" of imperialists and served the interests in the U.S. of the military-industrial complex.

It's a New Day

"This Land Is Your Land" Like Woody Wrote It

Worth reading!!!!
Pete getting in his last licks on the main stage!!!!

"This Land Is Your Land" Like Woody Wrote It

Sunday 18 January 2009

by: Tommy Stevenson, Tuscaloosa News (AL)

http://blogs.tuscaloosanews.com/default.asp?item=2317698

Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen at the Lincoln
Memorial Concert. Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen,
performing at Sunday's concert at the Lincoln Memorial.
(Photo: Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty Images)

Bee Branch - At the conclusion of today's concert for
president-elect Barack Obama 89-year-old Pete Seeger
joined Bruce Springsteen for a sing-along with perhaps
half a million people of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is
Your Land," which I dare say practically everyone in
the country knows from childhood.

But sly old Pete, who actually hoboed with Woody during
the Depression and Dust Bowl, had the crowd sing the
song as it was actually written, as not only a
celebration of this great land, but as a demand for
workers' and people's rights. That is, he restored the
verses that have been censored from the song over the
years to make it less political:

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property; But on the
back side it didn't say nothing; That side was made for
you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people, By the
relief office I seen my people; As they stood there
hungry, I stood there asking Is this land made for you
and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me, As I go walking that
freedom highway; Nobody living can ever make me turn
back This land was made for you and me.

The "relief office," of course, refers to the ad hoc
soup bowls and such set up during the Depression before
the New Deal began to get the social security net we
have all depended upon since the 1930s in place.

Seeger, like Guthrie, has been a controversial figure
at times during his life, questioned by the witch
hunting committees of Congress in the 1950s, black
listed, and even banded from television as late as the
late 1960s.

But while he hasn't got much of a voice left anymore
and did not attempt to play his banjo today, it was
wonderful to see the gleam in his subversive eye as he
did his call and response with the throngs in front of
the Lincoln Memorial.

Somewhere Woody - and Leadbelly, and Sonny and Cisco
and the rest of the great balladeers of that bygone era
- are smiling tonight.

-----

Full Lyrics

This Land Is Your Land
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

Chorus:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Chorus

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the
steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Chorus (2x)

And so it goes

From the 1951 archives of The Times (of London--before Murdoch).

1951
Homeless in Gaza
From a correspondent lately in Gaza: To most people the name of Gaza brings a picture of blind Samson pulling down the pillars of the house upon the Philistines and himself.

Today, the reputed tomb of Samson is inhabited by a family of Arab refugees. They form part of the horde of some 200,000 people from Palestine who poured into the "Gaza Strip" in 1948, during the troubles between the Arabs and Jews which broke out after the partition plan was announced.

In December 1948, the United Nations Assembly resolved that "the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so." The Arab League took its stand on this and insisted on the refugees' repatriation as a condition of peace negotiations. It has since taken a more realistic view and, while still maintaining the principle of repatriation, has agreed that efforts shall be made to resettle the refugees in the lands where they now are.

The only exit from the Gaza Strip, which is hemmed in by Israel, is to Egypt, and there the refugees are not welcome. They are virtually imprisoned in the area, their only means of escape being a dangerous moonlight flit through Jewish territory.

Explosive forces
Colonel Howard Kennedy concluded his report to the United Nations Political Committee on November I with the words: As director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, I feel it my duty to bring these matters to the attention of the United Nations, because explosive forces are being generated which should be dealt with before the point of detonation is reached . Grave difficulties and dangers elsewhere should not blind us to this great human tragedy of the Middle [East]."if the refugees be left forgotten and desolate in their misery, peace will recede yet farther from these distracted lands". - The Times [March 2, 1951], Times Archive

A Dangerous Supreme Court Decision

by Norman Markowitz

As the Obama administration begins with the closing of Guantanamo, the rejection of torture as policy and the appointment of Leon Pannetta as Director of the CIA (hopefully a major step forward in the sordid history of that agency) the Supreme Court has ruled by a five to four decision to undermine the "exclusionary rule," used in U.S. criminal cases to eliminate evidence obtained by improper police conduct (unlawful searches and seizures, bureaucratic errors, etc.)

If one is innocent until proven guilty, if the standard in criminal cases is that one must be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, then the benefit of the doubt concerning such evidence, as more progressive courts at all levels have often ruled, should go to the defendant, since in the U.S. criminal justice system, indictments are very easy to get and trials far more common than in other judicial systems with civil rights, civil liberties protections(systems where, following the traditions born of the French revolution, indictments are difficult to obtain, but once one has been obtained, the defendant in effect is in a far more difficult position, having to prove in effect that he is innocent beyond a reasonable doubt and without the protections defendants are afforded by the exclusionary rule).

I don't want to exaggerate the influence of the exclusionary rule in U.S. courts. The gains that were made here in the 1960s and 1970s, according to the late Sam Dash and others, were undermined over the last three decades. But this is a very bad decision that should be seen as a "victory for the Bush administration and its policies as it leaves office.

In the five to four vote, Chief Justice Roberts issued the majority opinion and was joined by the Court's rightwing majority, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy, who has moved in his decisions to the right with the appointments of Alito and Roberts. The evidence in question concerned drugs and a gun found on an Alabama man by police through a search and seizure based on an outstanding warrant which was no longer valid. Although the outstanding warrant, which had been withdrawn, was still in the computer system, the evidence, on the traditional "fruit from the poisonous tree" doctrine, should have been excluded, since there was no reasonable expectation that the police would have gathered it had they not acted on what was a defunct warrant.

But that was not the way Roberts and his associates saw it. For them it was an example of "isolated negligence." In Roberts opinion, the exclusionary rule should be reserved for "deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent conduct, or in circumstances recurring systematic negligence." Beside the fact that "recurring systematic negligence" is something of an oxymoron, who is to apply this standard. The Roberts Court? Craig Bradley, a law Professor at Indiana University, responded insightfully that "it may well be that courts will take this as green
light to ignore police negligence all over the place." That is the danger and it is a clear and present one that the Obama administration and progressive state and local administrations must face, given the packing of the judicial system which began with Nixon four decades ago, accelerated with Reagan, and then was carried forward to its present level by the Bush administration.

The minority, whose opinion was written by Justice Ginsburg, focussed on the need to have a "forceful exclusionary rule" that protects defendants and deters "official lawlessness," particularly in an age of computers and electronic data bases where a incorrect or untimely data entry can have disastrous consequence. Bbut they were outvoted as, one expects, they will be until the Obama administrations begins to act forcefully to challenge and end rightwing domination of the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary.

As a final point, it is interesting to note that Justice Roberts in his majority decision contended that "the deterrent effect of suppression [of evidence under the exclusionary rule] must be substantial and outweigh any harm to the judicial system. Marginal deterrence does not 'pay its way'" Perhaps Roberts might listen to some of those nineteenth century conservatives whom he seeks to emulate in so many ways--those who kept on saying "we are a government of laws, not of men." And then there are the civil libertarians who he and his Federalist Society friends would not be seen with--those who said it is better if ten guilty men go free than if one innocent one is imprisoned (they sometimes put that in old Civics courses for high school students, however an example of false consciousness it may have been).

Finally, his comment that "marginal deterrence does not 'pay its way'" ignoring even the question of who is to determine with is marginal, would bring a smile to the lips of the late Karl Marx, who always understood that everything under capitalism was reduced to the cash nexus, even in this case the rules governing the presentation of evidence in criminal proceedings.