|
Dave Zirin "Death Row" Talks Back to Etan Thomas
This Sunday at 4 pm, I am proud to be speaking at an event in San Francisco called a "Civil Rights Slam for Justice," sponsored by among others the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. The slam will be at the Malcolm X school at 350 Harbor Street. In addition to myself and a crew of young artists, activists and poets, speakers will include an NBA basketball player by the name of Etan Thomas.
Regular readers of this column know that I’m not exactly shy about singing the praises of the Washington Wizards forward. Etan plays a gritty, elbows-up style of basketball, but on a microphone he is pure Jordan. In the tradition of Amiri Baraka, his poems are sharp enough to cut glass, and generous enough to leave seedlings that can sprout in the cracks.
I first heard about Etan's political poetry when a rumor started going around Washington DC that this rather gigantic gentleman with dreads was going to U street coffee houses reading anti-death penalty, anti-racist verse in front of a crowd you could fit in a van. Since then Etan has risen to every occasion, speaking out at last September's anti-war rally, speaking out against the mistreatment of Katrina refugees, speaking out against the execution of Stan Tookie Williams, and speaking out through a published book of verse fittingly enough called "More Than An Athlete" [Moore Black Press]....
Robert Jensen and Robert Wosnitzer Crash
"Crash" is a white-supremacist movie. The Oscar-winning best picture -- widely heralded, especially by white liberals, for advancing an honest discussion of race in the United States -- is, in fact, a setback in the crucial project of forcing white America to come to terms the reality of race and racism, white supremacy and white privilege.... "Crash" is white supremacist because it minimizes the reality of white supremacy. Its faux humanism and simplistic message of tolerance directs attention away from a white-supremacist system and undermines white accountability for the maintenance of that system. We have no way of knowing whether this is the conscious intention of writer/director Paul Haggis, but it's emerges as the film's dominant message.
Dave Saldana A Political Parable With Swordfights
V for Vendetta owes a debt to George Orwell's 1984, Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and any number of cautionary tales about government power and the public who surrender to it too easily. Like those books, the film does not resolve itself in a nice, button-down ending, but leaves open what happens next. Although some of the dialogue is political cliche ('People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.') the message is more textured. Building a just society doesn't lend itself to facile resolutions.
V for Vendetta does not insult its audience with a 'Hollywood' happy ending. While you are likely to feel good as the credits roll, you are also likely to feel inspired and, hopefully, maybe a little bit like you've been sprung from a cage.
Tom Engelhardt An Interview with Chalmers Johnson: Cold Warrior in a Strange Land
Three-quarters of a trillion dollars is the number I use for the whole shebang [the U.S. military budget]: $440 billion for the authorized budget; at least $120 billion for the supplementary war-fighting budget, calculated by Tina Jones, the comptroller of the Department of Defense, at $6.8 billion per month. Then you add in all the other things out there, above all veterans' care, care of the badly wounded who, not so long ago, would have added up to something more like Vietnam-era casualty figures. In Vietnam, they were dead bodies; these are still living people. They're so embarrassing to the administration that they're flown back at night, offloaded without any citizens seeing what's going on. It's amazing to me that [Congressman] John Murtha, as big a friend as the defense industry ever had -- you could count on him to buy any crazy missile-defense gimmick, anything in outer space -- seems to have slightly woken up only because he spent some time as an old Marine veteran going to the hospitals.
Another person who may be getting this message across to the public is Gary Trudeau in some of his Doonesbury cartoons. Tom, I know your mother was a cartoonist and we both treasure Walt Kelly, who drew the Pogo strip. How applicable is Pogo's most famous line today: "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Molly Ivins The 'Long War'? Oh, Goodie
We are inarguably facing more terrorists now than there were when we started, so the Pentagon has decided to fight what it is now calling "the Long War." Has anyone asked you about this? Me, neither. Nor has anyone asked Congress. The administration -- mostly Donald Rumsfeld -- just decided we would have a long war and declared it, and is now committing us to fight against a fuzzy ideology no one seems to be able to define.
Our problem now is that we're not fighting the people who attacked us -- they're still running around on the Afghan-Pakistan border while we battle Iraqis who don't like us occupying their country.
As of Sept. 11, 2001, there were a few hundred people identified with al-Qaida's ideology. Even then, it was unclear the American military was the right tool for the job. Now, Rumsfeld is apparently prepared to put the full might of the U.S. military into this fight indefinitely, backed by the full panoply of ever-more expensive weapons and the whole hoorah. I don't think the people who got us into Iraq should be allowed to do this because, based on the evidence of Iraq, I don't think they have the sense God gave a duck.
Noam Chomsky Latin America And Asia Are At Last Breaking Free Of Washington's Grip
in Latin America left-centre governments prevail from Venezuela to Argentina. The indigenous populations have become much more active and influential, particularly in Bolivia and Ecuador, where they either want oil and gas to be domestically controlled or, in some cases, oppose production altogether.
Many indigenous people apparently do not see any reason why their lives, societies and cultures should be disrupted or destroyed so that New Yorkers can sit in their SUVs in traffic gridlock....
Growing popular movements, primarily in the south but with increasing participation in the rich industrial countries, are serving as the bases for many of these developments towards more independence and concern for the needs of the great majority of the population.
Chris Bachelder A Soldier Upon a Hard Campaign
I’ve written a novel about Upton Sinclair and the crumbling empire. The novel is about the serial resurrection and assassination of Sinclair. The death of the Left. The death of the political novel.... Seventy or eighty years ago politicians and public figures could speak openly about the cruelty of capitalism (you could even utter the C-word), and you furthermore could count on educated people to know that capitalism and democracy were not synonymous concepts, and often not really even mutually supporting concepts.
The novel, if that’s what it is, is satirical in nature, but I hope that the satire is not easy or one-dimensional. The book will seem, I hope, as ambivalent as it seems didactic, because the project grows, in part, out of a sincere ambivalence. I’m not ambivalent about the cruel and crumbling empire, but I am ambivalent about how to engage it artistically.... I’ve written out of conviction, anger, and sorrow, because it feels urgent to do so...but I’ve also written from genuine confusion and a grudging regard for complexity because I understand, from Virginia Woolf and others, that that’s what real artists do. We’ll see.
Ed Rampell Fear Brings McCarthy, Orwell Back Into Spotlight
The DVD of George Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck" - about CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow's expose of witch-hunting Sen. Joe McCarthy, censured by the Senate in December 1954 - was released Tuesday.
"Tailgunner Joe" also reappears in recent books, including ex-Washington Post columnist Haynes Johnson's "The Age of Anxiety," published last October by Harcourt. It opens with McCarthy's infamous 1950 Wheeling, W.Va., speech: "I have here in my hand a list of 205 members of the Communist Party still working and shaping the policy of the State Department." Johnson notes how that number kept changing and writes of "the boldness with which he twisted facts, or invented them, to make grave and unsubstantiated accusations at a moment of intense national fear."
This month Harcourt is publishing "Shooting Star, The Brief Arc of Joe McCarthy," by ex-New York Times reporter Tom Wicker, who calls McCarthy "the most destructive demagogue in American history, uniquely villainous, his sins against democracy not to be forgiven or forgotten." (Both authors repeatedly mention The Capital Times in their books.)
Others are exhuming McCarthy's legacy. In January 2004, David Horowitz's conservative online publication FrontPage asked reactionary commentator Ann Coulter whom she admired in the 20th century. "Joe McCarthy," Coulter responded.
In two 2003 Crown Forum books - Coulter's "Treason" and James Hirsen's "Tales From the Left Coast" - right-wingers attempt to rehabilitate and restore McCarthy. As redbaiting remains lucrative, the same conservative imprint plans publishing another McCarthy apologia by M. Stanton Evans in December. Grant Heslov, who co-wrote "Good Night" with Clooney, said "they were another inspiration for us to make this film" and compared McCarthy apologists to Holocaust deniers.
Emile de Antonio's 1964 documentary "Point of Order!" was re-released last November on DVD. In it, during 1954's Army-McCarthy hearings, counsel Joseph Welch famously rebukes McCarthy: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or recklessness. ... Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?"
George Orwell is also back, via the Actors' Gang's "1984" dramatization directed by Tim Robbins in Los Angeles. In Orwell's totalitarian masterpiece, Big Brother's Thought Police watch everybody through telescreens....
I asked Robbins if he'd revived "1984" to comment on today. "See it for yourself and decide," he replied.
Robbins' play occurs in Orwell's torture chamber. This is the Gitmo/Abu Ghraib/Bagram Air Base/extraordinary rendition edition of "1984," where "enemy combatants" are held without charges, trials, Geneva Conventions. Its telescreens suggest the warrantless wiretapping Feingold opposes.
When truth is suppressed, it doesn't disappear - it re-emerges, often in symbolic ways. Orwell declared, "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
Danny Schechter
"Violence is as American as Cherry Pie." -- H.Rap Brown
As the "Sopranos" return to the airwaves for a new season, the likeable Lorraine Bracco, who plays show shrink Dr. Melfi, was on the Colbert report suggesting that the HBO drama has one social value, it shows violence as it really functions in our culture.
Odd, isn't it, that we have to turn to fiction to be confronted with reality. What does that say about how well the news we consume on TV every day serves us?
And what does it say about us as a people - our attraction to, and perhaps even need for violence in entertainment? America's love affair with media about the Mafia is obvious, as is our addiction to crime shows....
Lila Rajiva Getting to the Point of No Return: A Conversation with Andre Vltchek
Toer and Chomsky both write that the apolitical position is the most thoroughly political position. [In art, and otherwise.] To live in a society and pay taxes is to accept the power relations in that society and thus to be political and to a lesser or greater degree complicit in the acts of the state. Thus, the invasion of Iraq, the dispossession of Palestinians, the threats directed against Iran, the failure to address the needs of the poorest countries and the weakest groups during the so-called development round of the World Trade Organization can take place only because not enough people protest or rebel against these developments. [Again, in art, and otherwise.]
[Furthermore, it might be added that polemic art can portray and reveal reality as well as any other type of art. And can also be as aesthetic and literary as any other type of art. And can be aesthetic and literary in ways that nonpolemic art can never hope to be. For one great, classic example, see Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal."]
Vanessa Redgrave The Second Death of Rachel Corrie: Censorship of the Worst Kind
I am urging the Royal Court Theatre to sue the New York Theatre Workshop for the cancellation of the production of "My Name Is Rachel Corrie". Not because I donated money for this production, which the Royal Court have been fundraising for--a target of 50,000 pounds, underwritten by Alan Rickman.
This is censorship of the worst kind. More awful even than that.It is black-listing a dead girl and her diaries.A very brave and exceptional girl who all citizens, whatever their faith or nationality, should be proud and grateful for her existence. They couldn't silence her voice while she lived, so she was killed. Her voice began to speak again as Alan Rickman read her diaries, and Megan Dodds became Rachel Corrie.Now the New York Theatre Workshop have silenced that dear voice.
[Also see: Walter A. Davis Theater, Ideology and the Censorship of "My Name is Rachel Corrie": The Play's the Thing]
John Scagliotti Why Are There No Real Gays in "Brokeback Mountain"?
I had a hunch that the movie might not be the gay epic it's cracked up to be before I saw it. At a dinner in New York an African-American gay man named Eric didn't laugh at my Ang Lee name-dropping but exploded, "How could he have cast straight actors to play gay men in a movie that is about the problem about being gay in the sixties?" I joked, "I guess if Ang were going to do a film about American anti-Japanese bigotry in the 1940s he would cast Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as the Nisei star-crossed lovers forced to navigate their romance in the internment camps," but Eric did not find it amusing, and there was something exciting, because rare, in his anger.
[Also see: Brokeback Mountain: Pain is Not Enough]
Michael Janofsky Bush's Chat with Novelist Alarms Environmentalists
...In his new book about Mr. Bush, "Rebel in Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush," Fred Barnes recalls a visit to the White House last year by Michael Crichton, whose 2004 best-selling novel, "State of Fear," suggests that global warming is an unproven theory and an overstated threat. Mr. Barnes, who describes Mr. Bush as "a dissenter on the theory of global warming," writes that the president "avidly read" the novel and met the author after Karl Rove, his chief political adviser, arranged it. He says Mr. Bush and his guest "talked for an hour and were in near-total agreement." "The visit was not made public for fear of outraging environmentalists all the more," he adds. And so it has, fueling a common perception among environmental groups that Mr. Crichton's dismissal of global warming, coupled with his popularity as a novelist and screenwriter, has undermined efforts to pass legislation intended to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas that leading scientists say causes climate change.
Mr. Crichton, whose views in "State of Fear" helped him win the American Association of Petroleum Geologists' annual journalism award this month, has been a leading doubter of global warming and last September appeared before a Senate committee to argue that the supporting science was mixed, at best. "This shows the president is more interested in science fiction than science," Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, said after learning of the White House meeting....
The New Deal arts projects
"...provided work for jobless artists, but they also had a larger mission: to promote American art and culture and to give more Americans access to what President Franklin Roosevelt described as "an abundant life." The projects saved thousands of artists from poverty and despair and enabled Americans all across the country to see an original painting for the first time, attend their first professional live theater, or take their first music or drawing class.
"But the arts projects also sparked controversy. Some politicians believed them to be wasteful propaganda and wanted them ended; others wanted them expanded. Such controversy, along with the United States' entry into World War II, eventually killed the projects. But much of what they fashioned has survived through the efforts of museums, libraries, and archives, including the National Archives and Records Administration. This exhibition describes and displays the work of the New Deal arts projects and discusses themes common to this government-sponsored art. The paintings, prints, books, playbills, posters, and music transcriptions displayed here are more than artifacts and documents of an emergency work program. They are examples of an extraordinary burst of American creativity that occurred during a time of tremendous change and trial."
Corey Kilgannon Street Lit with Publishing Cred
On a recent Saturday night, Dewitt Gilmore, 41, stepped onto an idling bus waiting to make the trip from Columbus Circle in Manhattan to the Groveland Correctional Facility in Sonyea, N.Y., near the Canadian border. Dressed in a flashy warm-up suit, he squeezed down the aisle past women and young children clutching pillows for the overnight trip. Mr. Gilmore, a writer who goes by the pen name Relentless Aaron, was there to sell books. "For those of you who don't know me — where you're going, I was there for seven years," he told the crowd. "A lot of you have been buying my books for your husbands and for yourselves. I started here selling my books out of my knapsack...."
Eleanor Bader Female Muralists Dip Brushes in Women's History
A colorful mural of 90 female activists puts a splash of militant sass on the side of an otherwise drab wall in Brooklyn, N.Y. Produced by an all-female team of artists it leaves its chief creator dreaming of more public tributes to women.
Garrison Keillor On the Road Avec M. Lévy
Any American with a big urge to write a book explaining France to the French should read this book first, to get a sense of the hazards involved.... [If link fails, see here]
Dave Zirin The Xs and O's of Social Change
"Glory Road" tells the story of a basketball game that put sports in the middle of the civil rights movement. But it also recalls a time when the ordinary actions of coaches could unwittingly transcend sports and make a mark on history.
Key to the legacies of the two Hall of Fame coaches at the heart of "Glory Road" is how each dealt with the system of Jim Crow. Texas Western Coach Don Haskins didn't show up on the El Paso campus with dreams of becoming a white Martin Luther King Jr. To field a competitive team, he committed the revolutionary - some said suicidal - act of recruiting seven African American players. "I am not interested in color," he often said. "I'm interested in winning."
But Haskins' attitude changed as his team traveled the country and faced Confederate flags, racist graffiti and hostile, violent crowds of mostly white men. By the time the 1966 NCAA championship game with Kentucky came around, Haskins had told his team of seven blacks and five whites that he would play only blacks. Not only because this gave his team the best chance of winning, but because it was time to make a stand against Jim Crow.
FORTHCOMING:
The
CRIMINALIAD
by
UnDantéd Homerica
FOREWORD:
"An Enlightened Endeavor"
by Jo Swift
The Criminaliad:
A modern day epic
about a great invasion
and a glorious occupation
Middle East tragedies vie for Oscars
The turmoil of the Middle East will have a front-row seat at this year's Oscars. Two films -- one about Palestinian suicide bombers and the other about Israeli assassins -- compete for major awards after being both praised and damned in the court of public opinion.
Katherine Viner A Message Crushed Again
The Flights for cast and crew had been booked; the production schedule delivered; there were tickets advertised on the Internet. The Royal Court Theatre production of "My Name Is Rachel Corrie," the play I co-edited with Alan Rickman, was transferring later this month to the New York Theatre Workshop, home of the musical "Rent," following two sold-out runs in London and several awards.
We always felt passionately that it was a piece of work that needed to be seen in the United States. Created from the journals and e-mails of American activist Rachel Corrie, telling of her journey from her adolescence in Olympia, Wash., to her death under an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza at the age of 23, we considered it a unique American story that would have a particular relevance for audiences in Rachel's home country. After all, she had made her journey to the Middle East in order "to meet the people who are on the receiving end of our [American] tax dollars," and she was killed by a U.S.-made bulldozer while protesting the demolition of Palestinian homes.
But last week the New York Theatre Workshop canceled the production — or, in its words, "postponed it indefinitely." The political climate, we were told, had changed dramatically since the play was booked. As James Nicola, the theater's 's artistic director, said Monday, "Listening in our communities in New York, what we heard was that after Ariel Sharon's illness and the election of Hamas in the recent Palestinian elections, we had a very edgy situation." Three years after being silenced for good, Rachel was to be censored for political reasons....
Ramzy Baroud Cartoon Awakening: Towards a Positive Media Strategy
Much has been said and done in response to the deliberately offensive anti-Muslim cartoons published late last year by a conservative Danish newspaper, and profusely printed in many Europeans and non-European media, including South Africa, Jordan and Malaysia. While the prevalent narrative in the mainstream Western media has treacherously defended the essentially Western emphasis on freedom of speech and expression, an equally forceful reading of the event also took hold; one that incessantly wishes to differentiate between hate speech and freedom of the press, using legally enforced anti-Semitism laws and doctrines as a model. ...
John Nichols Cheney's Crimes
Goodness gracious! Could it be that comedians are doing a better job of connecting the dots regarding Dick Cheney's high crimes and misdemeanors than are the unintentionally ridiculous members of the White House press corps? ...
"Good news, ladies and gentlemen," announced David Letterman after news of the vice presidential shooting spree finally came out, "we have finally located weapons of mass destruction: It's Dick Cheney." Letterman scored another direct hit when he observed: "It turns out now that Dick Cheney did not have a license to hunt, and coincidentally, turns out we didn't have a license to go into Iraq."
Jay Leno was equally on target when he explained that: "You can't blame [Cheney]. Bush says you can spy on people without warrants, you can torture people, you can hold people without a trial, so Dick Cheney thinks, 'Oh what the hell, I can shoot a few guys.'" ...
But, as in the days when Pravda and Tass could not be relied upon to go after the big stories of Soviet shenanigans, Americans now know that, for the full story about this administration, they must turn to the comedians and the satirists who understand that Cheney's abuse of beer and guns cannot compair with his abuse of the most powerful vice presidency in American history.
Julian Borger Rickman slams 'censorship' of play about US Gaza activist
A New York theatre company has put off plans to stage a play about an American activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza because of the current "political climate" - a decision the play's British director, Alan Rickman, denounced yesterday as "censorship". James Nicola, the artistic director of the New York Theatre Workshop, said it had never formally announced it would be staging the play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, but it had been considering staging it in March. "In our pre-production planning and our talking around and listening in our communities in New York, what we heard was that after Ariel Sharon's illness and the election of Hamas, we had a very edgy situation," Mr Nicola said.
"We found that our plan to present a work of art would be seen as us taking a stand in a political conflict, that we didn't want to take." He said he had suggested a postponement until next year. Mr Rickman, best known for his film acting roles in Love, Actually and the Harry Potter series and who directed the play at London's Royal Court Theatre, denounced the decision. "I can only guess at the pressures of funding an independent theatre company in New York, but calling this production "postponed" does not disguise the fact that it has been cancelled," Mr Rickman said in a statement. "This is censorship born out of fear, and the New York Theatre Workshop, the Royal Court, New York audiences - all of us are the losers."
Rachel Corrie was a 23-year-old activist from Washington state crushed in March 2003 when she put herself between an Israeli army bulldozer and a Palestinian home it was about to demolish in Rafah, on the Egyptian border. The International Solidarity Movement, of which she was a member, claimed the bulldozer driver ran her over deliberately. The Israeli Defence Forces said it was an accident, and that she was killed by falling debris. The Israeli government said the demolitions were aimed at creating a "security zone" along the border. The Palestinians say they are a form of collective punishment. "Rachel Corrie lived in nobody's pocket but her own. Whether one is sympathetic with her or not, her voice is like a clarion in the fog and should be heard," Mr Rickman said.
My Name is Rachel Corrie consists of her diary entries and emails home, edited by Mr Rickman and Katharine Viner, features editor of The Guardian. It won the best new play prize at this year's Theatregoers' Choice Awards in London.
Israelis ask Oscars to drop suicide bomb film
The film shows Palestinians bemoaning the travails of life under Israeli occupation, yet its characters also debate whether this warrants resorting to violence.
Only politics in Oscar race is films' topics
The best picture nominees that emerged could almost be read as a civics lesson on issues with which America is struggling: homophobia in the case of Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain," racial tensions in Paul Haggis' "Crash," the responsibilities of the media in both Bennett Miller's "Capote" and George Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck" and the response to terrorism in Steven Spielberg's "Munich." ... Certainly, a number of the filmmakers who rose to the fore this year -- Clooney most prominent among them with his nominations for both "Good Night" and "Syriana" -- are unapologetically liberal. But rather than advancing an agenda, Clooney posited, "Films are reflecting what is going on in society." Spielberg likened the outpouring of engaging movies to the cycle of films that emerged in the late '60s and early '70s "when you suddenly see all of these political movies coming out at the same time, out of the watershed of politics." |
