Jeremayakovka

Déjà Lu - Dr. Phyllis Chesler On The Ottawa Honor Killing Trial

With Dr. Chesler's permission, posted below is a translation into French of her recently published remarks on the "honor killing" trial of Hasibullah Sadiqi now underway in Ottawa, Canada. For several years, she has applied her expertise in feminism and psychology to help explicate the intractable problems which Muslim immigration, and Islam generally, pose to liberal Western societies. More on Phyllis Chesler here. As a reference, some of her previous remarks on "Le Massacreur de Montréal" -- subject of the recent film Polytechnique -- are attached at the end (in English).

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Le Massacreur de Montréal et Hasibullah Sadiqi ont en commun un certain genre de père

(paru le 11 mai 2009 sous la rubrique "Chesler Chronicles" sur Pajamas Media) 

Écoutez, je m'entends bien avec un frère et une sœur afghans trentenaires qui me sont très chers. Ce frère préférerait  trancher sa propre main droite au lieu de faire de mal à sa soeur. Ils sont complétement occidentalisés, raffinés, charmants -- et pourtant, de plusieurs façons ils restent des Afghans. Ils sont dévoués à leurs parents, fréquentent souvent leur famille, les petits et les grands, mais aussi ils vont en boîte avec des non-musulmans de leur âge. D'habitude, ils font du souci chaque fois que les musulmans sont critiqués, blâmés, craints -- et pourtant ils sont avant tout citoyens du monde.

Ce frère et sœur très unis ont grandi dans l'Occident depuis qu'ils avaient cinq ans. Hasibullah Sadiqi, qui a assassiné sans pitié sa sœur Khatera et son fiancé, est venu au Canada quand il avait cinq mois. Pourquoi Hasibullah ne s'est-il pas intégré?

D'après une lecture de toutes les couvertages médiatiques, il existe un fait qui domine tous les autres. M. Sadiqi, a été tyrannique, un mari violent: il maltraitait des filles aussi. Cet homme (dont le nom et le sort j'ignore) a été tellement mauvais que sa femme, Nasima Fayez, a dû s'enfuir pour sauver sa peau.

Devant la cour, elle s'est décrite comme quelqu'un "à l'esprit plus ouvert" que son mari.

Mais le monstre à l'esprit-fermé s'acharnait à sa "propriété", à ses enfants. Il ne leur a pas permis de voir leur mère pendant six longues années. La maltraitance paternelle (non-spécifiée) "s'est aggravée". Dans le cas de la pauvre Khatera, son pére l'a poussée au moins une fois à tenter à sa vie et l'a causée finalement de s'enfuir chez sa mère à Vancouver. Fayez a envoyé des billets à ses trois enfants pour qu'ils la rejoignent. Ses deux filles sont venues. Hasibullah ne l'a pas fait. En fait, Hasibullah a essayé d'obliger Khatera de revenir auprès de leur père violent.

On ne peut que spéculer sur pourquoi Hasibullah n'a pas rompu avec son père. Peut-être il le traitait autrement, mieux, parce qu'il était un garçon, pas juste une fille. Peut-être M. Sadiqi l'humiliait et le battait également, l'a asservi. Mais en tout cas il est devenu le modèle masculin de Hasibullah.

Concernant les meurtres d'honneur à Dallas, Texas de Sarah et d'Amina Said, leur frère Islam restait fidèle à son père. Il était d'accord avec lui et persécuté ses deux soeurs au nom de son père et de l'"honneur" de la famille.

Aussi Hasibullah est devenu pour son père l'exécuteur et le vengeur. Il a démenti la version de la réalité de sa mère: "Ne me parle pas de mon papa ainsi." Sa mère a pleuré.

Souvenez-vous, s'il vous plaît, de Marc Lépine qui en 1989 a massacré quatorze étudiantes en ingénerie à l'École Polytechnique de Montréal. Lui aussi avait un pére (dans son cas Algérien) qui était un mari violent. Ce fait, que j'ai trouvé capital à l'époque, a été ignoré par la police et tous ceux qui ont écrit sur ce désastre. La police percevait cela comme un acte isolé d'un fou.

Lépine a été né "Gamile Rodrigue Gharbi" d'un père algérien et musulman et d'une mère franco-canadienne qui autrefois avait été bonne sœur. Le père de Lépine, Liess Gharbi, a brutalisé sa femme et son fils. Probablement il a appris à son fils que les femmes sont des esclaves qui méritent d'être battues même quand elles obéissent. Si elles n'obéissent pas, elles puissent être tuées. Peut-être Gharbi/Lépine a designé les femmes comme bouc émissaire pour les crimes graves de son père.

Si nous permettons aux hommes violents d'élever des enfants, nous récolteront ce même vieux tourbillon. Les filles de tyrans et de maris violents épouseront des hommes violents. Donc elles auront un sort semblable; elles sont "expérimentées", préparées à le faire. Les fils d'hommes violents - fils humiliés par leurs pères - deviendront des hommes violents eux aussi: mari violents et brutals avec les enfants, verbalement et physiquement et peut-être sexuellement.

C'est vrai pour n'importe quelle famille dans le monde. En Occident, nous avons certainement des pères violents. Et pourtant nous n'avons considéré les pères arabes, maghrébins et musulmans ni comme "malades" ni comme "criminels", s'ils battent regulièrement ou s'ils violent leurs femmes ou s'ils tyrannisent cruellement leurs enfants.

D'une certaine façon, ça doit changer. Sinon, rien ne changera.
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(traduit de l'américain par Jeremayakovka)

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From "Psychological Roots of Islamic Rage" (Nancy Kobrin, Ph.D., co-author), The Jewish Press, August 9, 2006; (see also "Open Season on Jewish Women", FrontPage Magazine):

What is important to note is that Gharbi/Lepine blamed women for the considerable crimes of his father, whose culture was Islamic and Algerian.

As Dr. Chesler recounts in her book, The Death of Feminism, in 2001 an angry mob of 300 Algerian men conducted a three-day pogrom against Algerian women in which they tortured, stabbed, mutilated, gang-raped, buried alive and murdered women in Hassi Messaoud.

In Dr. Chesler's 1978 book, About Men, she posited that the paternal abandonment of, and cruelty toward, sons may be a crucial component in mother- and woman-hating. Dr. Nancy Kobrin, in her forthcoming book The Sheik's New Clothers: The Naked Truth About Islamic Suicide Terrorism, suggests that the absolute degradation of Arab and Muslim women by a shame- and honor-society means that sons must perpetually rid themselves of the "contamination" that contact with women represents; and that sons must psychologically abandon their mothers even as they experience abandonment by their mothers. Many such sons are trained to mistrust, police, routinely batter, and sometimes even murder their female relatives.

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RARE Video Footage: Stanley Ann Dunham's Last Breakup Before She Met Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.

Something is missing....

More Midcentury Virile Thinking - Romain Gary

This time, from Frenchman Romain Gary who in 1970 published a splendid, sardonic memoir about racism in America, White Dog (Chien Blanc). In the late 1960s he was married to American-born film star Jean Seberg and the two were living in the Hollywood Hills. She pursued her acting career while he served as French Consul in Los Angeles. Gary shows Seberg becoming radicalized and manipulated by the emerging Black Power movement (caught up in what later became known as "radical chic"), whereas he serves as a jaded witness to America's and Jean's upheavals.

In one of several instructive passages, Gary cuts to the quick about Islam's appeal to black militants -- how it provides, almost literally, a fantastic cover for their antisemitism, their racism, and their anti-intellectualism:

I find the idea of an antisemitic black very seductive. I'm inclined to observe that the blacks "need" Jews like everybody else does.

This antisemitism is due partly to the comedy of Arabism and Islamism which extremist blacks play out in search of a spiritual elsewhere. Ninety-nine point nine percent are completely unaware that that the Arab conquerors were their ancestors' unremitting slaughterers, destroyers of tradition and the true African religion which was animist. They don't know that the Arabs converted blacks to Islam by the power of the sword in the same name and at the same time that they transformed the least resilient into eunuchs and sold their human goods to Portuguese, British, or American slave traders...

It would be unfair and unworthy to bear a grudge against today's Arabs and to cause them grief for the crimes of their ancestors, which at the time weren't crimes. Nothing is more far-fetched than to want to judge past centuries through today's eyes. But to go from there to seeing in Islam the incarnation of the soul of Africa means covering quite a few light years. When Malcolm X writes about white people, "How could I love the man who raped my mother, killed my father, and reduced my ancestors to slavery?" that nevertheless is exactly what he did when he threw himself into the arms of the Prophet...

George W. Bush, Dark Knight

See Fausta's comments on the current summer blockbuster (with links).

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Update: Brightening a summer San Francisco evening (note the turtleneck), Fausta and I met for the first time after her recent area appearance at the BlogHer Conference.

Arms and the Bogey-Man

You're going to get on that plane, Gentle Reader,
with Victor where you belong.








[Update: Just returned from the screening. Twice Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) wishes God's blessing on Rick (Bogart). Her character, of whom we learn nothing specifically religious, effortlessly and without fanfare says to Rick, "God bless you." Well, once she writes it, once she says it. Hmmm....]

This evening I'm going to watch for the (I don't know) fifth? eighth? time Casablanca (1942). Happily, it's playing on a single, giant screen in a landmark, palatial theatre that's just a hop & a skip from where I live. This'll be the second time I've seen it on a BIG SCREEN, the first being - mirabile visu! - with my gentle father at Hollywood's Grauman's Chinese Theatre. How to describe tonight's anticipation? It's like scoring home-field World Series tickets. But better.

Robert McKee has called it not the best movie of all time, but the most loved. No surprise there. Rarely does Hollywood's art bridge, simultaneously and seemingly seamlessly: the dreamworld of cinema ... masculine American romantic grit ... Europa's soft sensuality ... the waking dream of remembered love ... and the call to war's nightmare wakening.  In my mind it bookends neatly Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937), the slower paced but equally beautiful (not black-and-white, more like ink-and-milk), equally dreamy long goodbye to a world pushed aside by war, but sustained by Love transmogrified into Duty and Duty transmogrified into Love.

(Warning: Do NOT watch the clip if you haven't yet seen the whole movie.)

Wretched Gentile Becomes Righteous Gentile

In Claude Lelouch's version of Les Miserables (1995) Jean-Paul Belmondo (best-known as the young romantic thief in Breathless) plays an aging truck driver who tries to save a Jewish family during WWII.

Hugo's masterpiece is palpable and oceanic. It significantly affected Whittaker Chambers compelling him to seek out the Communist Party to try to do right in the world (which he confesses early on in Witness).

In contrast to the truck-driving desperados of Le Salaire de la peur (The Wages of Fear), it could also be titled Le Salaire de l'espoir (The Wages of Hope).

So what that the following video is French-only -- What are you, deaf? -- Let the mellow chanson roll over you....

And of course it's a little sentimental and lusty -- it riffs off of these posts

Yay for the righteous Yanks!

L'Été Va Bientôt Nous Quitter, Il Faut En Profiter

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"Syrtaki" (or "Zorba's Dance") the theme to the film adaptation of the immortal novel Zorba the Greek, rendered by the mortal Dalida.
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Summer's gonna leave us soon, we better make the most of it.

More Dalida clips: "Never on a Sunday" (English), "Ciao amore" (French), "Gigi l'amoroso" (English), "Born to Sing" (English)
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Or if you prefer, a scene from the original:

(It's a far cry from West Side Story, fortunately.)

The Banality of Evil - Iranian Edition

"Let Jews Move to Europe or Alaska," says Islamic Republic of Iran President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad on "al-Quds Day" (Arabic for "Jerusalem Day" -- that is, "al-Quds Day"). The rallies are massive, the demagoguery on full display, the demand clear: a "full referendum" on the future of the Jewish State, but to be voted on by millions from outside the Jewish State. Ahmedinejad's playing "chicken" with the West and the Arab nations on the issue of democracy. It's rhetoric and it's war at the same time.

Moving to Alaska is a euphemism. It's the same thing as, Pack one suitcase per household, leave everything else, and report to the train station at 700AM. We will be relocating you to recreational work zones in the east.... "Alaska" is a region of Ahmedinejad's mind. The hook for most American listeners is that "Alaska" is a region of the mind, too. A little like the way der Ost (The East) was a region of Hitler's mind, the near but nebulous territories he fantasized, lusted, planned, and attempted to conquer, colonize, and settle. All the way into Asia. The differences (roughly) are that America is a republic, Hitler had a reich, and Islam wants a caliphate.

Meanwhile Sean Penn and Eddie Vedder have their fingerprints on a new movie, Into the Wild, (book version) about a young, privileged, intellectually curious but at the same time completely intellectually lost young man (a recent liberal arts college graduate) who hikes into Alaska this time of the year with almost no supplies, tries to ride out the winter - and dies. (Reminds me a little of Five Easy Pieces, where in the last scene Jack Nicholson gives up his wallet and coat and bums a ride in a truck to Alaska while abandoning his girlfriend and their child she's carrying.) Give that man a Koran and he's John Walker Lindh or Adam Gadahn.

Time to go "into the wild" - but not to Alaska. Into the wilderness of a declining Western Civilization's political and diplomatic rhetoric.

Jeremayakovka's Top Ten Questions for Jerry Seinfeld

Honestly I don't think he's that funny. And I never found Seinfeld that funny (I've only seen a couple of episodes -- they just don't grip me as important...), but yesterday Debbie Schlussel had the opportunity to interview Jerry Seinfeld. She asked her readers for questions they would like to pose to him. My purpose in coming up with the following was neither to flatter nor fluster, but to reasonably press him, within the bounds of his person and his profession, to elaborate on:

Top Ten Questions for Jerry Seinfeld

1. Do you consider yourself "a Jewish comedian"? If so, How exactly?
2. What did you think of Munich?
3. What did you think of Schindler's List?
4. Have you ever visited either Auschwitz or Israel?
5. Where were you on the morning of September 11, 2001? How did the news coverage that day (or other means of learning about the attacks) affect you?
6. Have you ever traveled overseas to perform for American servicemen and women? If so, Why? If not, Why not?
7. Had you been offered the role of Daniel Pearl in A Mighty Heart, would you have taken it? If so, Why? If not, Why Not?
8. Mets or Yankees? Jets or Giants? Rangers or Islanders? Knicks or Nets? .... Hillary or Rudy?
9. Have you ever called any woman, seriously or in jest, "an ignorant slut" (a la the original SNL)? If so, Who? Where? When? Why?
10. If you were a tree, what kind would you be?
11. What did you think of Spinal Tap?

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What are your top ten questions for Jerry Seinfeld --   Jason? Debbie? Irina? Allison? Yehudit?

Love In The Time Of Necrophilia

Even if a husband lives ... two hundred fucking years ... he's never going to be able to discover his wife's real nature.

Welcome to "an Atlas lovers art thread" (Thanks, Pamela):

Better in many ways than his iconic turn in Apocalypse Now, but to many Americans less relevant probably, is Brando's tour de force in The Last Tango in Paris. Here's even more Brando, by quality and quantity, than in The Godfather. "This is one of those performances that goes beyond acting into something more confrontational." It goes without saying that the above scene hits harder if you're watching the whole flick.

The Last Tango in Paris is not about sex per se, no matter how famous (or infamous), no matter how startling, how unprecedented those scenes. It's about the infiltrating onset of decay -- the decay of ideas and possibilities, of desires and affections, all sheltering but festering lustfully still in a mind housed agonizingly in the flesh. It's about the decay of that flesh -- flesh livid and vivid, alluring and onerous, porous and odorous, yielding and unyielding. Whether stumbling, agog with helpless wonder and hesitant trust, upon life's fullest vigor, or contemplating with bracing bewilderment and piercing bitterness its incrementally impending exit, The Last Tango in Paris is decay by degrees. It is decay on the installment plan.... Not coincidentally, the film also sifts the diminishing returns of the barbed shards of shattered historical expectations -- revolutionary, colonial, decolonial. (Note well, apart from this clip, a certain earlier monologue, plus two later dialogues.)

The vigor of The Last Tango in Paris is a vigor mortis, its love a love in the time of necrophilia.

He Don't Fight For The Little Man, He Fights For Himself

The Taqiyyic Calm Within The Jihadist Storm

I love my native city more than my soul.
-- Niccolo Macchiavelli
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This from midtown Manhattan, Pamela waxes lionesshearted in "Waiting for Abu Godot":

I clock the war. It's what I do. I watch, I report and observe - I tell you when it's an observation. I distinguish between the actual news and my opinion. Something the mainstream media stopped doing long ago. They abdicated their role as public servant in delivering the news.... The crisis of our time is so pressing, so imminent, it has seized me. To my very core. I walk the streets of New York and feel as if I am walking the garden of the Finzi-Continis....

When I saw The Garden of the Finzi-Continis the first thing I thought of were those trimmed, magisterial residences of Fifth and Park Avenues and East End Avenues. Including, for that matter, Gracie Mansion.

How well I remember Manhattan's Upper East Side on hot summer weekends when the foot and street traffic dips 30+% because residents have skirted off to their second homes, time shares, etc. on the Island, in Rochester or Putnam County, on MV (that's Martha's Vineyard, for those not in the know) and beyond. At 4:00PM on a Saturday afternoon on Madison Avenue anywhere above 72nd St. you don't just hear a pin drop -- you see it drop.

How shady was my concrete canyon! [*]

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And this from Site Meter, someone (from undetermined motivations) pines to learn more about "kill Americans":

Domain Name		comcast.net ? (Network)
IP Address		69.136.82.# (Comcast Cable)
ISP		Comcast Cable
Location		Continent : North America Country : United States (Facts) State : Delaware City : Wilmington Lat/Long : 39.7592, -75.5664 (Map)
Language		English (U.S.) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinVista
Browser		Internet Explorer 7.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; InfoPath.2)
Javascript		version 1.3
Monitor		Resolution : 1280 x 800 Color Depth : 32 bits
Time of Visit		Jul 26 2007 11:28:22 am
Last Page View		Jul 26 2007 11:29:20 am
Visit Length		58 seconds
Page Views		1
Referring URL		http://www.google.co...&hl=en&start=70&sa=N
Search Engine		google.com
Search Words		kill americans
Visit Entry Page		http://jeremayakovka...if_a_muslimamer.html
Visit Exit Page		http://jeremayakovka...if_a_muslimamer.html
Out Click		Islamic Evil http://kenlydell.typ...ad.com/islamic_evil/
Time Zone		UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time		Jul 26 2007 2:28:22 pm
Visit Number		49,059

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*: Cf. the title and last line of dialogue from How Green Was My Valley (novel 1939; film 1941, trailer here)

The 1950 Nobel Prize Ceremonies - It Just Doesn't Get Any More Pompous Than These Circumstances

Had Ingmar Bergman never made it as a director, he might have ended up making rent through cheesy side work like what you see in the video (below). Solemn, self-important, and self-satisfied as only the face of Old Europe peeking out from behind its (soon to be post)modernist, excessively secular mask could ever be, here's a Swedish newsreel of the penguin-suited, stuffed-shirted ceremonies that bestowed the Nobel Prizes of 1950. Note the massive formal banquet in the 9th and final minute. I don't know about you, Gentle Reader, but given the nearness in time of the Nazi era, I must confess a Riefenstahlesque frisson at the sight of those rows of uniformed diners. A lonely thought, perhaps, but one in which I trust I'm not alone....
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Our boy Bill accepts his prize at 6:45. Rumor has it the down home romancier got deep into his cups before making one of the most exhortatory Nobel acceptance speeches ever. Hell, I would too were I being recognized for a lifetime of tackling the great reducing topics of adultery, incest, and lynching ... of broken promises and prison breaks ... of living with the dead and of surviving living ... all enmeshed in a regional American context, glossed with tsunamic linguistic force gleaned from the Judeo-Christian tradition. O Bill, you were our man at the 1950 awards ceremonies: a Marshall Plan of the mind from Mississippi....
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It's hard to watch this short and not start to grasp what Ingmar Bergman had to get away from in order to get to in, say, his first feature, Ode to Joy (1950, left), about the drama behind a classical musician's struggle to rediscover meaning after enormous personal tragedy -- or somewhat later in Through a Glass Darkly (1961, right), with its play-within-a-play and novelist/father-daughter & novelist/father-son subplots. Like certain European writers of that  burgeoning decade (think Albert Camus and Kateb Yacine) Bergman may well have been shouldering, in cinema, the import of Faulkner on the European mind. Of necessity, this would have entailed sidestepping the phenomenon of Faulkner....
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I don't hate the Nobel Prize! I don't hate it! I don't hate it! I don't....
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"The Battle of Algiers" - A Black & White Blueprint For Full-Color Fauxtography

* Updated * (Naomi Ragen emails that Frida Ghitis confirms this post with "How the Media Partnered With Hezbollah: Harvard's Cautionary Report")
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Last night I screened The Battle of Algiers for the first time since last summer's (unfinished) war between Israel and Hezbollah. Gillo Pontecorvo's Academy Award-winning masterpiece is in some ways a great dramatic record of the tragically implacable, anti-colonial war that ravaged Algeria's people and countryside for nearly a decade while leading directly to the downfall of France's Fourth Republic. The definitive English-language history of this 1954-62 conflict, Alistaire Horne's worthwhile A Savage War of Peace, is so titled for good and terrible reason. (Horne, btw, is on record chiding America's forward strategy of toppling Saddam Hussein.)
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Similar to Picasso's Guernica which had become (after the damage was done) lionized as Europe's definitive objet d'art commemorating all victims of fascist aggression, La Battaglia di Algeri became in the succeeding generation something similar: Europe's definitive objet d'art, extolled in the service of (perceived) anti-colonial, (perceived) aspirations.  With still panel and flickering image attempting to refract war's gory horror through prisms of unblinking moral lucidity, it's no surprise that director Gillo Pontecorvo chose to depict his subjects in black & white. Within that, however, are also many shades of gray. Thus we see in The Battle of Algiers artistic expression of necessary aspirations for independence, self-determination, and peaceful coexistence among all peoples. At the same time, it directly inspires the cult of armed revolution which in turn has spawned endless apologias for the exceedingly and unfailingly cruel list of tin-pot genocidal masters -- from Ernesto Guevara to Idi Amin to Pol Pot to Yasser Arafat to Saddam Hussein to Robert Mugabe -- not to mention independent Algeria's road to its own, homegrown, and precarious socialism. Uncritical screenings of this objet d'art , then, screen damage that continues to be done by dictatorial movements, both the aspiring and the realized.
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In terms of the poster art, note how the above image seems handily handspun from otherwise disparate, but equally strident, visual styles of inter-war Social Democratic pacifist Käthe Kollwitz and post-war Marxist-Leninist Huey Newton. Are the politics of The Battle of Algiers marching forward to socialism? Retreating backward from barbarism? Going round and round in the night consumed by fire? Reflecting neoconservative concerns, are its politics somehow now, nearly two generations later, marching backward to barbarism -- which is to say, retreating forward to socialism? The latter-day result is that -- from street agitators to the academiklatura and minds in between -- the Left adores The Battle of Algiers, to the point where it has elevated (that is, reduced) it to cult status. One thing I'll propose is that the West's inability (or refusal) to arrive at clear determinations about its own history -- and the attendant, staggering spiritual uncertainties -- have created an intellectual vacuum which postmodernism now most ponderously, with a kind of diffuse determination, fills.

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In the meantime, a mental note I took during last night's screening. In one of several fauxtography scandals during last year's Israel-Hezbollah war, the New York Times published advertised a demonstrably staged photo-op of the devastation effected by Israel's aerial bombardment of southern (i.e., Hezbollah-headquartered) Beirut (below). By a kind of visual verbatim, the pose in the news image seems not just staged but copied from images of a sequence halfway through the The Battle of Algiers. It's right after colonial police, acting under an exacerbated but concentrated authority, have blown up a building in the Arab casbah, and its residents (to paraphrase Jim Morrison) bring out their dead (above). Real warfare, real damage, real suffering, and real reportage aside, the latter-day result is neither drama nor journalism, but melodrama -- and melojournalism!

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See Michelle Malkin's substantive post for in-depth treatment of this and other recent fauxtography scandals.

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The dead speak: Poor mountain folk, poor students, poor young people -- your enemies of tomorrow will be worse than those of today.
-- Mouloud Feraoun (1913-1962)

Bonus: Leonard Lopate's sensitive, informative interview of U. of Nebraska prof James Le Sueur re Mouloud Feraoun. (Prof. Le Sueur has written a methodical and highly readable introduction to the French-Algerian War, which appears within his introduction to Mouloud Feraoun's Journal 1954-1962.)

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Defining the enemy, at home and abroad, that's our first task.

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Previous: "Hezbollah, Mon Amour" "Lesbollah"

Cuba Commentary (Passover Sermon)

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Following is a comment that I just added to the mix at Matt's recent blogpost on Cuba. For a guy who doesn't speak Spanish well and who's never been to Cuba, I didn't know I could get so worked up on the subject. Must be my happy childhood memories of "Guantanamera"! Don't neglect to read Matt's original post and the other comments, too. (What follows is edited slightly from its original form.) 
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Communist Cuba has been a pet cause of liberals and leftists for almost 50 years. It has hosted the Venceremos Brigade from the 1960s to the present day, harbors extremist fugitives from American justice (Black Panther Party honchos Huey Newton and Assata Shakur), and indulges mainstream fugitives from post-Soviet truth (Oliver Stone, Charlize Theron).

The New Left of the early 60s backed the revolution there from the get-go. Soft liberals -- as well as many Cuban Communists -- were taken in by Castro's pledge to institute democracy. Lee Oswald used the "Fair Play for Cuba Committee" as a cover to pose as a wacky leftist in order to assassinate John Kennedy. (In the opinion of many Republicans Kennedy was the last remotely honorable Democratic president -- to whom Richard Nixon and the Republican Party prudently ceded the 1960 presidential election despite having sufficient reason to contest and/or remain bitter about the results.) Personally, I was raised on career Communist Kulturkampfer Pete Seeger's recordings of the Cuban nationalist tune "Guantanamera" -- a non-Communist, patriotic song long exploited in the service of la lucha. In fact I attended the same summer camp in the 1980s which Pete Seeger had attended in the 1930s -- something of which I used to be proud.

Communist Cuba has been an enemy of freedom as we know it on at least three continents: at the first opportunity it installed (presumably) nuclear missiles aimed at North America, and it exported war to Bolivia in the 1960s and to Angola in the 1970s.

When la dictadura falls, there will be a vacuum of political leadership that will need to be filled. Hopefully that need is being addressed already. Yet the "culture war" as it relates to Cuba is already being waged. That is a good thing.

When I think of the prison that is Cuba I think of the description in Armando Valladares's Against All Hope of political prisoners being drowned in a shit-saturated sewage ditch under a baking sun on that Caribbean gulag aka Isla de Pinos. By comparison Camp X-Ray is a Travelodge (with room service) and The Shawshank Redemption a children's bedtime story.

It's up to the American and Cuban (and Cuban-American) Right to set the tone for this culture war, because if we allow types like Reinaldo Arenas and Wim Wenders to control the debate, we'll betray the Cuban people yet again.

- Un hombre sincero

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Let's see, the subject of last year's Passover post was the Soviet Union. This year it's Cuba. Next year in Tehran!

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ENDNOTES and AFTERTHOUGHTS:

* (Update 04/03) * My dear blogbuddy Fausta left a must-read comment about Reinaldo Arenas's work in the comments section. Please read it.

* Fausta, with whom I sometimes argue -- but always patiently, carefully, and constructively (and therefore, Gentle Reader, instructively) -- suggested in the comments that Arenas's life and work are a direct subversion of the Cuban regime. Indeed. When it comes to truth, Fausta and I are always on the same side of the debate. And we always root for each other, even when we're on opposing sides of the debate. It's just that here I'm keen to push the empirical and analytical envelopes in a certain way.

* My (first) pre-emptive statement to the PC Thought Police, whom I expect to pound on my door because I mentioned Reinaldo Arenas as neither a hero nor a victim, although in many ways he was both (and both at the same time): My phrasing is deliberate, and I own it. I don't suggest banning from the cultural debate the import of Sr. Arenas's life and work and death (by suicide), nor diminishing their potential contributions to it. As if I'm capable (or desirous) of suppressing truth! All and everything I'm saying is that his life and work and death should not set the tone of the debate.

* My (second) preemptive statement to the PC Thought Police: Lest you accuse me of being barren of compassion for anyone who suffers and dies -- so wastingly and so wastefully -- from AIDS, or for anyone who lives on after loved ones have died from AIDS, you need to surrender the calculating portion of your intellect (if only for a moment) to my sonnet "When Late We Lie."

* My (third) pre-emptive statement to the PC Thought Police: Now -- does "silence = death"? Or is silence golden? (Hint: that's a trick question.)

* My (fourth) pre-emptive statement to the PC Thought Police: I've always got one finger pointed in your general direction. You'll have to guess which one, though.

* My (fifth) pre-emptive statement to the PC Thought Police: I'm happy to debate any issue with anyone, it's just that -- by way of some kind of neoconservative "affirmative action" -- defectors from the PC Thought Police are encouraged to apply. (Need more encouragement? Go read Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy.)

* My (sixth) pre-emptive statement to the PC Thought Police: The blogosphere's on to your devilish masters!

* Found a suitable "Guantanamera" video!  After everything, este viejo's still got his moves. Just like the Cuban people. Take it away, papi!:

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Brokeback Mountain, Take 1

* Updated *

A reader asked my opinion of Brokeback Mountain which, as I noted in the previous post, is one of the most exhausting movies I've ever seen. ("Exhausting" I mean as a compliment.) Here's my first attempt at a critical and constructive (as opposed to deconstructive) take on it:

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The movie turns an average piece of short fiction into an above-average moviegoing experience. It is heartfelt, professional, cinematic art. I grant it that.

The story, imho, has some weak spots that are worth considering. First, since by the 1970s gay communities were springing up around the US, these two guys could have picked up and moved -- but ... this story was a tragedy ... whose "anchor" was ... that mountain. I mean, it wasn't called Jack and Ennis Ride Again, and that's for a strategic dramatic reason.

I found Ennis's "broken family" speech (shortly before he and Jack first make love) not quite convincing, neither as character motivation nor as dramatic preparation for what shortly afterwards was the story's biggest emotional "leap." A counterpoint, I suppose, is the fact of the long, gradual lead-up of the many scenes on the mountain, scenes which "prepare" us emotionally for that scene. Yet this counterpoint admits the story's artificing -- that a strategic, emotional, and ideological fictionalizing is at work. In any case, this (to me) less than convincing quality allows, I think, a case to be made that Ennis was emotionally entrapped into their affair. Were I to take this plot and run with it, I'd emphasize a motif of emotional and sexual entrapment -- not necessarily malicious, but objectively harmful -- and Ennis's pathetic participation in it. I'd emphasize in him a more, well, *manly* struggle to come to grips with the loving and honorable duties of being a husband and father. (The same goes for Jack, too.) I just was not satisfied with watching Ennis's long, slow slide into a haunted, proto-alcoholic solitude. The short story, btw, which I read before going to the theater, opens with a particularly stark image of this, one which the screenwriters chose to omit.

Unfortunately I can't think of a conservative critic of Brokeback who adequately engages it where its emotional rubber meets the aesthetic road. Mark Steyn, e.g., made a quip about the irony of them agreeing they're not queer and then going back to having more sex. How Steynian! But that's not the same as meeting the movie on its own (aesthetic) terms. [Update: Steyn confronts Brokeback to some extent here.]

Powered by a conscientious balance of restraint and candor, Brokeback Mountain is convincing emotionally -- intellectually, no; but emotionally, yes -- which is art's first (though not last) responsibility.

Pachelbel Cowboy

When was the last time you listened to this?

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Whenever I hear "Pachelbel's Canon" I'm reminded of Ordinary People whose opening sequence it dominates.
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(still from Ordinary People)

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Some movies have completely exhausted me -- Raging Bull, Brokeback Mountain, Midnight Cowboy, The Last Tango in Paris....

Others have reduced me helplessly to tears -- Crooklyn, Ordinary People, Blue Velvet , Glory....
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Chicks don't dig it when I tell them I admire Last Tango. (I do, Gentle Reader, I really do. I admire it and I say so.) They think, Oh! He's itching to rape me in the ass. Scenes of such criminal marital desperation made current by Last Exit to Brooklyn and Brokeback Mountain overinform the popular imagination. In Last Tango that rape scene -- the second in the movie, but the only one anyone remembers -- was part of a more artful progression. And chicks really don't dig it when I then inform them that a while back I dated men. They think, Shit, now I know he's primed to do it.

Chicks want someone to take them to chick flicks -- When Harry Met Sally, 13 Going on 30, and whatnot. Most women, just like most men, don't want -- refuse -- to see the whole picture.
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(still from Midnight Cowboy)

That's a big part of why for years I gave up completely on American women and was only able to hit it off with European-born ones.
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ENDNOTES and AFTERTHOUGHTS:
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* Who else can act so brutally and imply such vulnerability and need?
-- Roger Ebert on Brando in Last Tango (Show 'em how it's done, Marlon!)
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* We fight for men and women whose poetry is not yet written.... (audio)
-- Matthew Broderick as Col. Robert Gould Shaw in Glory
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* She was stroking the innocence out of him.
-- James Baldwin, Another Country
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* Salvation lies within.
-- The Shawshank Redemption

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Previous: "An Open Letter To Matt Sanchez", "De Profundis Clamavit", "Recent Poem - 'Miserere'"

Oscar Mild - A Quick Fisk Of TNR's Oscar Blog

*Updates (2/28) * "The movie magic is gone," says LA Times;  McCain announces on Letterman (confirms my digs at Gore (below))

Today at AmThink Cinnamon Stillwell has an article up lamenting the ho-hum partisanship of this past Sunday's Oscar ceremonies. She calls them "an orgy of liberal self-congratulation" for having extolled and propagated their versions of diversity and environmentalism.

While not breaking ranks with Oscar's cultural commissars, the The New Republic manages to acknowledge, inadvertently at times, some of the ceremonies' glaring flaws and peculiarities. Here are a few fisked posts from its blog series Oscar Wild!:
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David Thomson states the obvious in the inappropriately named "Patriotic Gore":

The Academy made it very clear last night that they want Al Gore to run.... If you were crazy (and I think we have to admit that a lot of us are), you were even prepared for Gore to announce that he was running last night, there and then, on the spur of the moment. But Al rides without spurs.

And truth to tell, he looks more and more as if his personal campaign to save us from hot gases is to inhale as many of them as possible. [emphasis added] Last night he seemed to be wearing a tuxedo that used to be reserved for Orson Welles. So he joshed us about running and looks completely out of shape. I take that as the surest sign that he is not competing.... But being edgy and rivalrous was never quite his thing. And he plainly reckons that to declare your candidacy at the Academy Awards is simply too vulgar for words. He's that out of touch--he doesn't see that our fear of vulgarity is melting quicker than the ice floes.

In fact, had Gore announced then and there it woudn't have been vulgar -- it would have been savvy and historical. It also would have been a massive, indirect fundraising pitch. Remember when Schwarzenegger announced his campaign for California governor on The Tonight Show? The future Governator sure overcame any so-called "fear of vulgarity" on that sound stage. Fortunately, Arnold knows some things about acting and producing, and crowd-pleasing and competing, which the former Vice President does not.

Henry Riggs plays the race card (nationality card?) with "The Year of the Mexican": I wouldn't vote for an anti-immigration candidate, and I wouldn't shake hands with Tom Tancredo. But those people are out there, and they aren't doing too badly for themselves these days. Hollywood knows this, and I think that Hollywood, for once, is right.... What nationality is more lefty chic right now than Mexicans? If Oscar voters want to scratch that political protest itch, some or all of these Mexican nominees may benefit.

That's "anti-illegal immigration" to you, buddy.... If Hollywood is right this time, then please say in what areas you think it's wrong.... Lastly, name names: Will you state for the record what other nationalities are "lefty chic" right now? Thank you, btw, for admitting that awards are handed out as expressions of political or multicultural sentiment, as opposed to artistic merit.

David Thomson calls The Lives of Others -- a drama about East Germany's massive and repressive police-state apparatus (and the winner for Best Foreign Film) -- "The Real Best Film of '06" because it's an American film in anticipation. He pegs it as a parable for what the United States is allegedly turning into. Ja wohl!

Isaac Chotiner bemoans the utter lack of good, middlebrow films by asking "Where Have All The Good Movies Gone?" Yet he refuses to provide the obvious answer: that diversity of professed political opinions -- or better yet, the absence of professed political opinions -- would force filmmakers to focus exclusively ... (Think, think!) ... on filmmaking.

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As Sam Goldwyn used to say, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union." We need Sam now more than ever.

Dishonorable Mention

In a new feature at The Nation (online), here's a poll for best "progressive" film of 2006.

She Wasn't An Angel, But ....

Oh, no. One of JMK's muses is dead.

A casual mention last night of the melancholic, romantic German art-house hit film Wings of Desire (1987) led to my discovery that the lead actress, Solveig Dommartin, died last month of a heart attack at age 45.

I saw Wings of Desire twice in one week around the time it was first released, when I was still a teenager at age 18 going on 100. Her performance was a fleshy touchstone that set off intangible sparks. The credo of romantic love -- which Marion (Solveig's character) recounts to Damiel in the underground bar after the Nick Cave set -- became my own.

From an interview she gave:

It's the beauty of the heartfelt truth that enables you to move forward, and live and make of each day a new miracle and make a wonder of life itself. And for me, that's pretty much what Wings of Desire is about.

In addition, Wings of Desire bolstered my mournful, shepherding attitude towards Germany and things German (and towards Eur0pe, generally). I'd already had this mournful, shepherding attitude and have never lost it. It has been tested, but never toppled. (Note, for example, that this blog's essential colors are the German national colors.)

The obit said she died of a "heart attack," but who knows what really happened...? I'm still in shock, obviously.

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* * *

Here's the bar scene.

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Their last loneliness: the hypnotizing scene shortly before they hook up, during the performance of Nick Cave's "Six Bells Chime."

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What he fell in love with: the burlesque gymnastics of that despairing daring young woman on the flying trapeze.

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I know now what no angel has ever known. --Damiel

Another Reason Children of Men is Politically Sterile

Earlier this month I lit into the movie Children of Men. In competition with Judeo-Christian values, MWC is a secular allegory for both a dystopian "endtimes" apocalypse and an earthly redemption through the arrival of a bastard, and very maculate (i.e., spotted, dirty), conception.

A recent blog item reminded me of another of its motifs. For several times CoM informs the audience just how awful, intrusive, and omnipresent is our not-so-futuristic state-level surveillance of public spaces. Yet whatever surveillance we already have -- and we may in fact need more of it -- is serving a good purpose, as the following footage of a would-be London suicide bomber demonstrates (scroll down).

Newt Gingrich, for example, is one man with children who has been very clear that future terrorist attacks, particularly anything approaching or surpassing what went down on 9/11, will usher in a degree of surveillance and a curtailment of freedom-as-we-now-know-it that we can barely imagine.

So we should honor what our actual surveillance capacity is able to capture. Honor it by studying it, learning from it, enhancing it, and continuing to apply it. If you believe in civil liberty, then you need to fight terrorism with the most intense vigor and diligence. Because that's how to preserve it.

In the meantime watch what this news clip of a piece-of-shit-punk trying to commit mass murder. I'd say he was trying to commit suicide, except that "suicide" means the killing of oneself -- What kind of "self" does a brainwashed piece of shit like this have? What kind of "self" worth preserving anyway...?

Must Listen: NPR Guest Says Antiwar Americans Are Pampered Whiners, Irrational Bush-Haters

Someone at NPR must be about to be shitcanned, because Batman artist/movie director Frank Miller carefully and sensitively makes the case for cherishing America, for waging war against Islamic terrorists, and for identifying a major Bush failure. Read about it here; audio here:
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Mighty cultures are almost never conquered, they crumble from within. A lot of Americans are acting like spoiled brats because everything isn't working out perfectly every time....

Let's finally talk about the enemy [and] the 6th Century barbarism they represent.... I'm speaking into a microphone that never could have been the product of their culture and I'm living in a city where 3,000 of  my neighbors were killed by thieves of airplanes they never could have built....

Where I would fault President Bush the most is that in the wake of 9/11 he motivated the military but he didn't call the nation into a state of war and he didn't explain that this would take a communal effort against a common foe....

What's In A Thumb Up?

Two American generations now have had their opinions formed, or nudged slightly, by Roger Ebert's signature movie reviews. He sums up a movie, packaging encyclopedic knowledge into Kaffeeklatch format, turning -- for just a few minutes -- your living room into a screening room. With a Thumb Up!... (or Down) he decrees, like Roman emperors did of gladitorial combatants, a film's fate.

One thing's for sure. Ebert is the height of popular authority on mainstream movie releases. This status as gatekeeper of where the celluloid meets the box office is exactly what he has worked for, worked so very hard and consistently for, most of his adult life. Is this a good thing? A bad thing? Is it "It is what it is"?

Don't think JMK doesn't know that Roger Ebert is an institution. And while it's possible, and probably advisable, to take a cue or two from Ebert, let us not confuse the roly-poly, critical conversationalist with the institution. For remember what David Mamet once said: if you hang around an institution long enough, they let you become one of the guards.

On that note, for a kick-ass comic strip take on Roger Ebert's institutionalness, see Udargo's, "The Thumbs of Fate." You'll never look at a movie Roger Ebert the same way again. For example:
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Me, I miss Gene.

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In case you're wondering, as this Progressive magazine interview shows, he's definitely liberal politically. He's certainly earned a place in the cultural sun to speak his mind and have it heard. And he hasn't forgotten the critical bottom line: [A] movie isn't good or bad based on its politics. It's usually good or bad for other reasons, though you might agree or disagree with its politics. With his stamps of approval to Michael Moore and Sean Penn and Adrien Brody, Ebert displays a seamless comfort zone where a leftwing politic has sewn itself onto the mainstream cloth. (On the other hand,
Frontpage pounced on that interview in "The Shrill Shill.")

Viva Guantánamo, Abajo Children Of Men

* Updated *

American beneficence to its incarcerated suspects is incredible! As this Wall Street Journal column, "The Gitmo High Life," reports:

When it comes to medical care, almost no expense is spared -- as I discovered after spotting an overweight man lounging in the rec yard of Camp Five. "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?" I inquired (he was some distance away). "No, that's Paracha," came the somewhat exasperated reply.

Saifullah Paracha is a Pakistani businessman and media owner who claims two meetings with Osama bin Laden were purely for journalistic interest. He is believed to be an important figure in the case against Majid Khan, one of the 14 "high value" detainees recently transferred to Gitmo from CIA custody. Last year Mr. Paracha's son Uzair was sentenced to 30 years in a U.S. prison for aiding an al Qaeda operative in a plot to bomb U.S. targets.

Maybe terrorism is stressful work. But whatever the reason, the elder Paracha also suffers from heart disease. So late last year -- at an expense of some $400,000 -- the U.S. government flew down doctors and equipment to perform cardiac catheterization. Mr. Paracha's response was to refuse treatment and file a petition in U.S. federal court for transfer to a hospital in the U.S. or Pakistan. At least his lawyers were frank about their cynical motives: "His death in U.S. captivity would be a blow to American prestige."

* Update *
Related: "edgy and sexy" pro malo legal practice -- "major American law firms effectively subsidize interned terrorists"

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Aside: Yesterday I squandered a couple of hours watching the dystopian, despairing, nihilistic, anti-family values (and mostly, anti-logic) flick, Children of Men. "The Gitmo High Life" brings it to mind because COM takes repeated rhetorical aim, as only cinema can, at the alleged fascistic cruelty with which Western governments treat immigrants. As with Windtalkers, COM's protagonist is a spiritually marooned, straight, white male who delivers (in this case, literally) a person of color from a wartorn setting for his own and Western civilization's secular redemption. Its dramatic inspiration issues from a colossal collapse of  time-tested Western warrior values whose scope boggles the mind. What the hell did its screenwriters learn in college and/or film school? (For starters, they only half-digested 1984 and must have mainlined Withnail and I.) Similar to another current release, Blood Diamond, if the protagonist would simply have picked up a gun (or rifle or machete) during select moments in the script -- and used it! -- the movie would be over in a snap because then he would actually solve the dramatic problems instead of squirming from one scene of impotent exposure to violence to the next.

JMK gives Children of Men two middle fingers down! DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME ON IT.

Rocky Meets His Match

Who is this gal and why is she smiling?
Pure fandom, of course -- and then some.

Hezbollah, Mon Amour

* Update (01/10/2007): see also neo-neocon's reflections on growing up in the shadow of Hiroshima  *

Sometimes we have to avoid thinking about the problems life presents.
- Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima, Mon Amour

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Late year tasks will mean patchier posting this and next week.  For now, here's a look back in contempt at the media manipulations and fauxtography that surfaced during Israel's retaliatory war against Hezbollah last summer: Hezbollah, Mon Amour.

The post originally appeared as a comment under Jake Novak's "Top Ten French Middle East Peace Proposals." For more on Hezbollah's calculated, ruthless, and deadly abuse of the mainstream media and on that media's complicity -- not to mention Hezbollah's deadly abuse of non-combatant Lebanese civilians -- please see:

Michelle Malkin's "Reuters Withdraws all [Adnan] Hajj photos"
Russell Berman's "A Critical Theory of Hezbollah"
Honest Reporting's "Dishonest Reporter of the Year"

See also: "Lesbollah"

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Hezbollah, Mon Amour is based loosely on Marguerite Duras's screenplay for Hiroshima, Mon Amour: While Israeli forces drive through southern Lebanon, an alcoholic Frenchwoman -- haunted by memories of her affair, under German occupation, with a soldier of the Wehrmacht (and of her public humiliation after the liberation) -- has a one-night stand with a Shiite Lebanese Hezbollah sympathizer in Beirut....
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Hezbollah, Mon Amour

SCENE ONE - BEIRUT APARTMENT - NIGHT

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SHE
Je t'aime.
[I love you.]

HE
Je t'aime.
(Sound of EXPLOSIONS. Through the window little SMOKE PLUMES rise on the horizon.)

SHE
Je t'aime!
(They embrace. SHE kisses him. They pull apart.)

HE
Je t'aime, mais...
[I love you, but...]
(HE looks down. Close-up of a KORAN and an AK-47.)

HE
... j'aime Allah ... plus!
[I love Allah ... more!]
(HE scoops up the KORAN and the AK-47. SHE grabs his shoulders from behind, presses her head into his back.)

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SHE
(collapsing onto his back, sobbing)
Je comprends.
[I understand.]

HE
(shaking her off)
Non! T'comprends pas.
[No, you don't understand.]
(HE spins around to face HER. SHE stands tall again, her FACE twisted. SHE draws back HER HAND to slap him. HE grabs HER WRISTS, crushes them together, and yanks her towards him.)

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(shaking her head, exhausted)
Non... comprends pas, mais ...
(entreating his eyes with hers)
je t'aime!
[No, I don't understand, but ... I love you!]

(Close-up of their FACES pressed within an inch of each other - but not kissing - and HER HANDS, pressed together at the wrists, prayer-like, between HIS FISTS.)
HE gazes at her, then shakes her off. SHE TUMBLES into the corner where the KORAN and AK-47 had sat. HE walks out. Sound of another EXPLOSION. Through the window another SMOKE PLUME rises on the horizon.)

SHE
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Sales juifs!
[Dirty Jews!]

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SCENE TWO - DEMOLISHED BUILDING - DAY

(Close-up of HIM lying sprawled out in rubble, HIS HAND clenching his AK-47, the KORAN nearby.)

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(Pull back to ARAB WOMEN beating their chests and ARAB MEN pulling debris away.)

(Pull back further to INTERNATIONAL JOURALISTS photographing the scene.)

(The JOURNALISTS leave.)

(One of the ARAB MEN slaps HIM on the shoulder. HE grabs the AK-47 and KORAN, springs to his feet, and dusts himself off....)

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# # #
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Like Buffalo, But With an "R"

this may not be the mark fix you are looking for but holy cow he gets slammed in this one!

Loyal and loving Mark Ruffalo fans mention my hefty fisking of an interview he granted back in October to Democracy Now's Amy Goodman. (Scroll within the link down to "4mark"'s post, time-stamped @ 5:49 PM today.) The interview had been all about politics -- namely, Mr. Ruffalo's decision to prominently lend his name and his voice to one of the most virulent and anti-American "antiwar" organizations in the weeks leading up to the pivotal mid-term elections. In "Mark Ruffalo - 30 Going on 13," JMK blogged between the lines of that interview, literally. JMK did not criticize Mr. Ruffalo's right to petition his government -- I criticized the judgment he exhibited while exercising that right while, yes, trying to rip him a new one for it. If anyone concerned has anything to add, please do.

Hollywood's Tired Stereotypes

We keep coughing up $8 or $10 to see this crap and we forget how dull most of what's pumped out of LA-LA land really is. John at Right Wing News reminds us why:

Evil Businessmen: Do almost all businessmen who appear on the Silver Screen have to be greedy, ruthless, polluting Robber Barrons who'd be thrilled to sell poisoned bubble gum to orphans if they could make a couple of bucks on it? Big corporations provide jobs, pay huge tax bills, chip in countless millions of dollars to charities, and usually bend over backwards to make sure their products don't hurt anyone and comply with the law (out of fear of lawyers and government regulators, if for no other reason). Yet, if you formed an opinion of businessmen from watching films, you'd think the average corporate CEO had the same ethical standards as a Mafia Don. Isn't it time for that to change?

Deranged, Trigger Happy Soldiers: Almost every American has family and friends who've served in the military, which is why it's more than a bit annoying to see our soldiers so often portrayed as kill-crazy thugs with mental problems who'd happily kick their own grandmothers down the stairs if they got an order to do so. If anything, soldiers tend to be some of the best of us, which is what makes the way they're so often treated on film such a shame.

European Terrorists: We're in the middle of a world wide war against Islamic terrorists and yet, what do we see at the theaters again and again? European terrorists. That makes about as much sense as making movies about British redcoats threatening America during WW2. Come on, Hollywood, don't let political correctness keep you from doing movies featuring the least sympathetic villains since the Nazis. What better enemy could there be for a hero to fight?....

Click through his link for more.

Thanks for the reality check, John!

God Spoke: "Al, Your Documentary Stinks"

Al Franken, of newly-bankrupt Air America fame, has a mockumentary out which is not coming to a theater near you, or if so, not for long. I watched the trailer and clips for God Spoke at its web site. It's a year in the life of Al Franken -- baiting Republican pols and pundits, entertaining American troops with degrading humor, dining with Walter Mondale, etc. Nerds raised to believe that Mark Russell, Garrison Keillor, and Andy Rooney are the arbiters of incisive political humor will line up to see God Spoke. Most others will pass.

In two and a half weeks it has scrounged just $64K at the box office. Its directors brag that screenings have sold out, which may be accurate but, judging by the breadbox size of the theater it's set to show at in my neck of the woods, that's no feat. $64K in barely 3 weeks? Yes, God has spoken.

Mark Ruffalo - 30 Going on 13

(Update 12/13: Welcome MarkRuffalo.net readers! Comments on your attention to this post here.)

Shlumpy hunk Mark Ruffalo is a great American success story: an ordinary guy who paid his dues for years in theater before breaking out in the indie film scene and in Hollywood. He's also a lamentable American distress story: insecure with the Land of the Free's prosecution of the War on Islamofascism (and possibly with his newfound, lofty perch in American society) he believes that lending his celebrity to the most knee-jerk and virulent American anti-American enemies will "make a difference" here in the Home of the Brave. Michelle Malkin called him out because of his wholehearted embrace of today's nationally-organized anti-American demonstrations. JMK takes it to the next level by parsing his recent interview with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman. (That Amy Goodman, a featured speaker at the Council on American-Islamic Relation's upcoming annual banquet). JMK comments within, in red:

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(Mark Ruffalo - anti-American extremist mouthpiece)

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On "getting involved":

I started to get involved during this election, in the last election with Kerry, and I went and campaigned for him in my home state. And I had never really been politically sort of motivated.
Yeah, the last election drew me back into politics for the first time in over a decade. JMK went out-of-state to campaign for Wesley Clark because I couldn't stomach a Northeastern liberal for president (certainly not Kerry or Dean). For the first time I saw a Michael Moore mockumentary (guess which). Voted for Kerry with dispassion.... Today I think Bush is the better man by far. Like any halfway decent actor, Mark, you're in touch with your "motivation." Ok, let's take it from the top. Places, everyone! And ... action!

There’s a huge constituency of Americans that just aren't being heard. It isn't -- what we’re asking isn't being reflected in the way this administration is governing.
Only elected representatives have "constituencies." It was a close election, but your guys for president and vice-president lost. Your "huge constituency" -- just a portion of the larger, actual one -- was heard on Election Day, but a huger portion of it (Bush voters) was heard, too. Since then the president has lawfully and rightfully represented his constitutency -- all of us -- as he sees fit and in the face of highly questionable oppositional conduct, from many quarters (the intelligence community, the State Department, the mainstream media). You don't have to like it, but you have to accept it. Unless you're champing at the bit for impeachment -- or worse.... So now in order to be heard you link up with revolutionary communists who align with terrorists? You're no Einstein, Mark. Guess what? You're no Eisenstein, either!

I saw an ad for World Can't Wait in the New York Times a few months ago.
What sophisticated research, dupe.

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On how Mark's new movie All The King's Men helped him see the wisdom of the Democratic Party:

AMY GOODMAN: Your latest film is All the King's Men?
MARK RUFFALO: That's right.
AMY GOODMAN: And do you think this can be put in this political context? What is it about?
MARK RUFFALO: Well, I think ultimately it’s based on Robert Penn Warren's book by the same title, and James Carville told me early on that it was the sort of underground political manual for American politics…. And Walter Mondale said you could always tell a politician by the deals he makes. Are the deals generally for the people or are they deals that are just awarding a small constituency of people, a small group of people?
Here's confirmation that the Left is extrapolating from a dramatization of Huey Long's career a parable representing the Bush Administration, one which is not just inaccurate but a potential incitement to assassination. Long was a self-made man who played on the "little-guy vs. big government" theme his whole career; Every Man a King is the title of his autobiography. This paints a portrait very much unlike our supremely affluent, Ivy League-educated neoconservative 43rd president. And Long was assassinated, not over ideology (which fires the murderous hatred of the president's domestic enemies), but by a crossed political rival. Bad analogy, Amy!
Second, the movie is based exclusively on Robert Penn Warren's novel or, if not, then the story is being deliberately "adapted" to conform to your version of the present. From your choice of words, Mark, JMK infers the latter.
Third, if James Carville is in communication with you then you are no longer (if you ever were) an average citizen who happened to read the New York Times and happened to see an ad against the Bush Administration that happened to express your longstanding unarticulated disagreement with its policies.  No, Mark, you have just verified that you let yourself be conscripted into the Democratic Party's glitterati. The recent-father-who-wants "to give back a little bit something" is just a patina over this larger power play in which your name, your true ordinary guy origins, and your very soul are being used. Obviously that's what you want (consciously or unconsciously). Yet know that as you are used so you will be judged.
Fourth, again, improper use of "constituency."

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(Huey P. Long - Mark Ruffalo looks the part more than Sean Penn does, no?)

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On the terrifying risk of "speaking out" in Hollywood:

AMY GOODMAN: How dangerous is it or popular is it to speak out in Hollywood?
MARK RUFFALO: I’m terrified, really, to be honest with you. I know that a lot of people in Hollywood feel the way I do. A lot of people who have come out, have been, you know, severely maligned in the media, this crazy liberal media that we keep hearing about. They come down like a hammer to people who speak out, especially from Hollywood.
Is this persecution or merely what anyone should expect when stepping into the arena? Examples, please.

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On being Mark Ruffalo:

But I feel like -- I don't know -- I feel like it’s not enough just for me to complain to people in closed quarters. I feel like I have to sort of put my money where my mouth is, not unlike Sean Penn does.
Mark, has it ever occurred to you that you might be better off unburdening your confused emotions to a therapist -- or better yet, take a hard look in the mirror -- and not to a nationally syndicated journalist! (For starters, I think the country would be better off if you did.) And ... do I detect a pronounced case of Penn-is envy?

AMY GOODMAN: When you spoke out at an event this week, you read a statement of Sean Penn?
MARK RUFFALO: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: What’s the most powerful part of that statement for you?
MARK RUFFALO: Well, you know, Sean also has this incredible wit, which is included in here: “In fascism, one serves a state. Let's show the world that with democracy we can make the state do our bidding….”
Definite Penn-is envy.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you considered organizing within Hollywood?
MARK RUFFALO: I, you know, I try. I talk to people there. I do it in my own way. I feel like someone's got to make a step, be the sacrificial sheep, so to speak. And then, I’m hoping that people will sort of get behind me, you know. They do. And they do in a quiet way. You know, I’m terrified to show my face as the sort of, you know -- there’s a lot of outspoken people, and Sean is certainly one of them. And I’m following in his footsteps, and Paul Haggis and Harry Belafonte, and, you know, there’s many, many others.
Hey, Mark, beware! Amy's recruiting you to recruit others! But we all know you're not really a Will-to-Power-player. You're an ordinary guy craving to transcend his perceived affluent marginality, one who's willing to let himself be used to the max to satisfy that craving. "Sacrificial sheep"? JMK knows you know it's "sacrifical lamb," but that Freudian slip speaks volumes: you, Mark, are the sheep being led -- in order to mislead millions of other people, like sheep. What's being sacrificed is not your career in Hollywood nor your reputation in the media, but your discriminating political judgment and self-respect. Your newfound "friends" -- the anti-American radicals and Leftocratic Party operatives -- are severing them from your body and handing them back to you on a platter. Your newfound "antiwar" celebrity is the American leftwing counterpart to an overseas jihadist beheading, one to which you willingly submit.

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On New Orleans, post-Katrina:

And there are parts of that city that are an absolute war zone. The Ninth Ward hasn't been touched, where all those poor people who are in Dallas and Houston, all what we call “refugees” now in America. American citizens, we call them “refugees,” all over the United States scattered to the wind. Their homes are still sitting there, rotting. Nothing’s been done.
It's a devastated American city, but -- especially when we're at war with well over 100,000 troops committed in two major theaters of operation-- to call the Ninth Ward a "war zone" mixes apples with oranges. "Refugees": more war-zone lingo, plays well with the "social justice" crowd. (Try "diaspora" when you're ready to play to the race crowd.) "Nothing's been done": Hey, drop the megaphone and pick up a shovel! Or call Dennis Leary, who founded an organization to help American firefighters -- before 9/11! Thanks again for confirming that your complaints are against the entire Bush presidency, not simply disagreements over a particular policy. See you at the '08 Democratic National Convention!

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"I'm Mark Ruffalo and I approve this message":

AMY GOODMAN: Explain the protest.
MARK RUFFALO: Well, World Can't Wait to Drive Out the Bush Regime is October 5th. And it’s in 175 cities. It went from 60 cities to 175 cities since last week…. None of us really share the same political beliefs, other than that we don't want a theocracy.
When Congress eventually, I hope, revives a version of the House Un-American Activities Committee in order to expose, indict, and prosecute those in the United States who abet terrorists, you will have to answer for your actions. I do ditto your remarks, Mark, regarding the threat of theocracy, but if you can't tell the difference between Christianity's virtues  implicitly expressed in the foundations of the American republic and the tenets of militant Islam explicitly expressed in sharia law, then God help you.

[Video and audio available here.]

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ftr, I've seen Mark Ruffalo in two movies - the perky-but-mediocre chick-flick, 13 Going on 30 (which I let my girlfriend at the time twist my arm into going to), and the revealing-but-far-from-uplifting adaptation of an Andre Dubus short story, We Don't Live Here Anymore (about the hollowness of the marriages of two 30-something English and Creative Writing instructors).

Lots to Do

Thanks for visiting and making this JMK's most fruitful week yet, with over 500 visits and counting! For a part-time blogger who doesn't Photoshop, barely knows HTML, and only recently marked 100 days throwing himself into this new media, I'll take it!  Thanks again for being a part of it.  More and better material to come. Promise.

Offline affairs are pressing, so there's no new material today. Heading into the weekend, then, please feel free to tool around the archives.  A few suggestions:

* My review in May of the preview of Oliver Stone's World Trade Center is being confirmed now by the pros. (Shoving ten pounds of Vietnam War history into a five-pound parable of coming-of-age and lost-innocence made his Platoon one of the most powerful movie experiences I ever had. So I know Stone's got storytelling powers; what's to be seen is how he treats, or mistreats, history while telling this story.)
* Here's my stab at "talking to a liberal" (by choice).
* For late-night demon-wrestling, there's a whole lot of versifying (others as well as my own), plus other litterateuring, goin' on under the category, "Poesy".
* And don't forget my advice on which tool to pick out to deal with Hezbollah, "Home Improvement - Zionist Style."

Have a great weekend.
Shabbat shalom.

Oliver Stone Says "Uncle (Sam)"

Just watched the World Trade Center trailer, via Expose the Left.  It's by a director I view with great reservations, starring an actor whose forte is intelligent romantic comedy.  But I must say that the trailer got to me. Maybe Andrea Berloff's script (Who?) is worth its salt. I didn't expect to be moved by the work of an Oscar-laden, anti-establishmentarian, multi-millionaire who a few years ago -- projecting on to al-Qaeda his own rage against the big studio machine -- bloviated:

I think the revolt on September 11 was about order.  It was about f**k you, f**k your order.... It was an eruption of rage about this. And it is time perhaps to reconsider the world order. 

When opinion-makers (which A-list Hollywood directors certainly are) flaunt opinions like that, they need to be monitored very closely. Well, I've changed a lot since that awful day; this summer it'll be time to see if Stone has changed at all.  Of course something tells me that I shouldn't hold my breath, that I'd do better rooting for Nick Cage's character and that of his co-star Michael Pena.  Because the chances of Oliver Stone changing from paranoiac Left-wing conspiracy-theorist into a reliably patriotic filmmaker may be less than the chances of two transit cops surviving the collapse of one of the world's tallest buildings.  My stern suspicion is that by taking on World Trade Center Stone is trying to pull a sleight of hand: politically dumbing down our memory of that day's terrorist attack while nevertheless attempting to not go down in Hollywood history as "Oscar bin Laden."

But enough about Stone, Cage, Pena, and relative newcomer Berloff.  What's moving about this trailer are the no-name actors who, because they really are just like most of the rest of us, drive the misery and the heroism home that much more convincingly, like in United 93. I suspect that if World Trade Center feeds our American hunger for big stories about 9/11, it will be because it'll be feeding us big stories about little people, stories that no matter how craftily scripted really can't be made up.

If you're up for it, see what you think:

"I would make a Muslim 'Life of Brian'." -- Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Update 5/9: Michelle Malkin posts impressions of Ms. Ali's Harvard appearance of just a few hours ago, and offers a stirring tribute on her latest Vent segment (click "Women Warriors" at the end of the Malkin link); Miss Kelly was there and makes you wish you were, too.

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Little Green Footballs has footage of a February 2006 appearance on Norwegian television of Somali-born, Dutch Member of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Her nominally polite interviewer wears a grin that seems to me to present the form of hospitality while yet withholding the spirit of it. It's that old liberal grin that, when confronted with what it cannot or will not understand, tries to disarm it with (apparent) kindness.

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Nevertheless, Ms. Ali makes a number of splendid points, including:

I make a disinction between Islam, on the one hand, and Muslims, on the other hand....

What I'm looking for is more reason among Muslims, and less religion....

I wish I had the time and the means to make it -- I would make a Muslim Life of Brian. I would. Yes, absolutely.... That is what I see as self-censorship -- and in a way also a betrayal of the institution of freedom of expression -- that the filmmakers, the novelists, the poets, the people who use the imagination to make change are now being very quiet when it comes to confronting and reflecting on Islam.

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Watch the interview over at LGF and see for yourself.  Then send it to your friends.

V is for Victory, not Vendetta

JMK never for one moment lent credibility -- not as art, not as politics -- to Hollywood's recent glam glom on fascism and terrorism, V for Vendetta. With complete clarity of purpose conservative Don Feder isolated it as "Hollywood's romantic take on terrorists." Loosely-hinged liberal Roger Ebert obfuscatingly found in it "an audacious confusion of ideas" while he "enjoyed their manic disorganization." And so-called antiwar enthusiasts Justin Raimondo and Michael Moore's crew gleaned confirmation of their worldviews from what JMK has always suspected: Vendetta is a big-budget version of an anarchist's comic book.  That's all I've needed to know.  Until now.

A recent post at Common Sense Journal cuts Vendetta down to size with, among other things, an unsparing, must-see, five-minute video, V for Vendetta: Imaginary Dictatorships and Fake Bravery. It takes footage of real 9/11-era terrorist atrocities (New York, Madrid, London, Bali) and real Islamic death-cult propaganda (incitement to murder Danish journalists; the martyrdom video of the teenager who blew himself and others up in Tel Aviv last month), and intersperses it with publicity interviews with the movie's grown-up posterchildren, Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman.  The overall effort attempts to discredit and shame these actors for their roles in irresponsibly entertaining Vendetta's notions of terrorism.

Warning: The video also includes some particularly disturbing footage of a black (presumably African) woman being stoned, kicked, and burned to death by a black (presumably African and Islamic) mob for being a "Western sympathizer". As CSJ cautions, this is "not for entertainment, which would be evil, but to show the true evil of killing innocent civilians." From YouTube:

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So give V for Vendetta two thumbs down ...

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... and give Islamofascism two fingers up!

Because giving Islamofascism just the middle finger is not enough.

Update: Atlas, Kesher, and Malkin are all over these very same issues. Sandmonkey goes apeshit over the movie.

An Honorable Mention

The other day that voice of righteous sanity in LA-LA land, screenwriter and novelist Robert Avrech, paid us the honor of mentioning our recent debut on his own blog, the award-winning, babke-munching, and heart-wrenching Seraphic Secret.

"Whether it's true or not," Robert writes of Jeremayakovka, "I take full credit for its creation."  That's fine by me.  Also true is that anyone who opens himself to Seraphic Secret will come away changed in some way.  Not just me -- or she, or she -- but anyone with a heart. For there are no cowardly lions at Seraphic Secret. Quite the contrary.

Reading Robert's blog I sense answers to questions I first recall hearing in the arthouse hit Wings of Desire (which in the 1980s I saw three times in one week at the now-defunct Bleecker Street Cinema): "Where are my heroes? Where are you, my children?"

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With that in mind, I've set out at Jeremayakovka to do for others what Seraphic Secret does for me: to make us all more courageous and more gentle readers. 

Is Paris Driving?

Rendezvous: On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB . . . .

         

Too bad Princess Di didn't hire him.
Alternate title: "A Man and a Woman and a Car"
Via American Diva