(A friendly casual visit from the President of the United States:
I doubt that, do you?)
Lifted from the New York Post Newspaper
By MURRAY WEISS, Criminal Justice Editor
Last Updated: 7:58 PM, May 13, 2010
Obama is the second President to visit. In 2002, President George W. Bush similarly thanked the NYPD in the wake of the destruction of the World Trade Center.
"I just wanted to stop by say, Thank you," Obama began during a 10-minute visit to the NYPD’s Real Time Crime Center....
"I know you folks are busy, but I just wanted to come by and say thank you. I was telling the mayor and the commissioner that ...."
Commentary:
At approximately 4:15 yesterday afternoon I was trying to make my way to 120 Wall Street where the WBAI office is located and the usual few minutes was much more than that. Lower Manhattan was closed off to everyone except those stationed to protect the President. For seemingly endless blocks stretching for miles the street appeared empty and this Casual visit of "I just wanted to come by and say thank you" was a night mere of formality and financial strain on a City already in compromised financial condition; two presidential helicopters, accompanied by several overhead helicopter to stationed to protect, thousands of police, motor cycles, limousines, police cars and unmarked cars and unmarked people punctuated with traffic cops at every step of the four block trip from subway to Wall street.
And who does he see.......the police. This is not a visit to thank the street ventures, the Vietnam Vets who were the identifiers of the car which was the object of terror. Those men disappear, again the invisible people of the city who make the city safe, who feed us, provide umbrellas and sun glasses and scarf and gloves to keep us warm when we rush out of the house improperly prepared for the versatile New York City weather.
If Obama had come to the City and said, I want to thank the police but first I want to thank the real heroes of the day, the men who didn't mess up the entire operation of terror control then I would have overlooked the inconvenience his trip meant to millions of New Yorkers trying to make their way to a second job or to their personal space of choice on Thursday after regular working hours.
The similarity in the mess up from failing to identify the potential threat, to the failure to immediately implement identification of the suspect, to finding the suspect on a PLAN! with doors closed ready to take off.........what did happen to the security the City is paying for instead of paying for education, health care etc.. The similarities in the ineptitude of the law enforcement army that is thrown in our faces everyday is staggering. But more than that this incidnt should put a dent in the ever growing movement of the 911 Truth seekers.
It is the incompetence of those we trust to protect us that is glaring in this incident and that is the real reason Obama came to New York City to say thank you. He is telling the public, reassuring us all that we are in safe hands just as George Bush did in 2002 because he knows that we aren't. All the money in the world can't stop a terrorist attack when done with minute attention to detail and money to effect the act.
The only real way to stop terrorism is to stop acting the part.
Killing is not the way to achieve peace
Friday, May 14, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
MOTHER AND CHILD
writer-director Rodrigo Garcia (Nine Lives) and executive producer Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel)
“MOTHER AND CHILD”
Opens Friday, May 7th in NY at the Landmark Sunshine and Lincoln Plaza Theaters
Starring
Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, Kerry Washington
Samuel L. Jackson, Jimmy Smits
with
Shareeka Epps, Cherry Jones, S. Epatha Merkerson, Amy Brenneman, David Morse, Marc Blucas, Elizabeth Pena
plot: Three women's lives share a common core: they have all been profoundly affected by adoption.
Mother and Child opened on May 7th to coincide with the great Mother's day recognition/celebration events that bode only good, kind and charitable warmth on women who assume the role of Mother.
While the phrase "happy mother's day" is repeated often throughout the day from even strangers to women they think might be a mother the phrase reemphasizes our fantasy notions of mothers which is even more potent when combined with "mother and child" Almost like the idealac Madonna recreated in all those perceived to be mothers, an image that is more destructive to human relations than supportive of women as real, complex vital contributors to society.
In Mother and Child the Mother is difficult to like and the child is adopted; Not of the mother's loins.
And the men........they are quietly supportive or not, in contrast to the role that men of this generation of new fathers are assuming.
To experience our fantasies crumble, delivered with brilliant actors and unusal clarity with attention to minute details is an experience that is essential for sorely needed change.
My mother was not a likable, lovable person. But she was my mother and as an adult I embraced her as such. If the fantasy of the mother had never existed, to accept my mother as she was wouldn't have been as difficult nor painful
And that is why I recommend this film. See Mother and Child and reunite with reality
Monday, May 3, 2010
WOMEN WITHOUT MEN Shirin Neshat
Plot: The 1953 Iranian Coup that brought the Shah into power as told through the eyes of four women
Cast:
Pegah Ferydoni
Anita Shahrzad
Shabnam Tolouei
Orsi Toth
One of the many challenges facing Shirin Neshat in her directorship of Women Without Men is how to sell to an American and European audience an interesting engrossing story that is also an historical film that both explains the unique Iranian culture and shows the super power involvement that resulted in years upon years of violence; lack of freedom, and lack of democratic governance.
The main focus of this film is the 1953 Coup supported by the British and the CIA when the Shah took full control of the country including its army. The Coup shifted the Iranian society from a once democratic society to a type of dictatorship, severely monitoring the people through his secret police called Savak recruited from the rank and file of the neighbors /friends of ordinary citizens.
I remember as a child the images televised of the Shah riding into Iran to secure his power. He was so obviously old. I thought, why is the U.S.A. bringing him into power. Why him? That question remains........even today.
To determine answers to this question and many others Shirin Neshat uses women to bring Iran into the minds and hearts of movie goers is such a gentle way that says so much.
As Shirin Neshat says:
"This film is dedicated to the memory of those who lost their lives in the struggle for freedom and democracy in Iran - from the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 to the Green Movement of 2009."
Shirin Neshat raises the question of the veil, (chador) presenting it both as a symbol of liberation and of repression; When i see the women in my neighborhood wearing the veil I am in awe of their courage to dress so differently from others and yet, I fear the reason a women wears this garment has more to do with the dictates of her husband, of her religious/country of origin than with the image she wants to present to the outside world
In Women Without Men the garden (filmed/photographed with beautiful colors, textures) "is treated as a space of exile, refuge, oasis, where one can feel safe and secure" in contrast to the black and white scenes of street protest where "color is purposely drained, to give a sort of archival quality to the picture".
Thankfully there is no ambiguity about the theme of this film: politics through the eyes of women, the women who assert themselves into the streets, the voice, the mass presence of those Iranians who want what we here in America once enjoyed seemingly without restraint.
This is the power for change in Iran. Maybe a lesson, a way of life we will one day assume as our own
Women Without Men is a beautiful informative entertaining film that will live on as one of the pivotal moments in film
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Fathers and their daughters: when love turns sour
The May 3rd issue of the New Yorker Magazine has a compelling story written by Janet Malcolm, reporter at large."Iphigenia in Forest Hills (New York)
Anatomy of a Murder trial.
The accused is Mazoltuv Borukhova a 35 year old Physician, a very attractive small thin woman with extraordinary long flowing black hair and a face, a physical demeanor that conveys confidence, competence, compassion and unfaltering courage to meet whatever challenge the trial and beyond might bring to her life. Her destiny is in the hands of lawyers, a not impartial judge, witnesses, the jurors, none of whom seem to understand her and most of whom were convinced of her guilt before the trial began.
Janet Malcolm chose to focus on the travesty of justice afforded Mazoltuv, a fascinating emotionally draining story of seemingly unlimited scope. I chose to examine the particulars, as presented by Janet to see how this crime, whoever committed it was compelled by circumstances that forced the issue. The child's father, the former husband, had to be stopped. But why?
This true story emerges from the tightly knit ethnic group of Jewish people known as the iphigenia Jews identified by their distinctive clothes, distinctive way of life. They have strict rules seldom broken that encompass how the men and women relate to one another in public ( they don't hold hands nor show any display of physical contact). They are intensely private people living within their group(cult). Imagine the trauma afforded this ethnic group when one of their own is murdered. Murdered in plain sight of his young, four year old daughter whom he was meeting to take from her mother to his home for parental visitation. The crime was unthinkable. The public exposure of ways and customs of this cult, unbearable.
There is a long and ugly history of fathers who sexually abuse their daughters. In the film An Americian Haunting 2006 , reviewed below, the underlying theme is the sexual deflowering of the budding teenage daughter who then goes crazy with all the hysteronics that horror flicks champion. What was less than appealing to a mature adience, the horror flick excitement, was more than made up for by the performance of Sissy Spasak who played the suffering Mother with such perfection that she left no doubt in my mind that I know this mother, I know her and so do we all. She is fully aware of her husband's night time sexual escapades, her husband's nightly assault on their daughter and chooses to look away thus by omission allowing him to abuse the one person she wanted to protect. There is an ending to this situation. The father dies. He dies and the film ends. The symptom vanishes covered up by all the right phrases, sentiments apologies. But the problem remains. Fathers who express their love for their daughter through unacceptable sexually compelled acts of physical violation. that is the issue, the problem that remains taboo, almost unspeakable.
A third exposure of this theme is the recently shown film (on Cable)The Color of Rain. The husband, a judge by profession who gets a young heroin addict pregnant and she has the baby which he then takes as his own. He makes of the baby's mother, a weekly babysitter for which the mother must pay with sexual favors that she can't afford to deny. Not if she wants to see her daughter, to spend time with her.
In this case the young girl becomes a hero of sorts. She doesn't go to the police as Mazoltuv tried to do And she doesn't arrange for anyone to be killed. She is not a doctor, she is a street person, without professional credentials and she does what she has to do to save her daughter. She kills her. She takes a pillow and weeping quietly, she suficates her baby daughter into the quiet more tolerable hereafter.
What does Mazoltuv do? That question can not be satisfactorily answer because the fact of her husband repeatedly playing with their daughter's vagina did not get the attention such a crime by a grown professional man, whatever his religion or occupation, deserves or rather must have.
And further........
The item which proved to me beyond a doubt that Mazoltuv was not guilty of sanctioning the murder of her husband in pain sight of her daughter and friends was the one detail in the trial no one could explain.
Why did Mazoltuv fail to hear the gun shots when her husand was shot and killd? The gun had its silencer in place for the first shot but then the silencer was dislodged and the next two shots were heard by people far from the crime scene. Only Mazoltuv who was right there, bending over her estranged hsuband's body did not hear them. This detail Mazoltuv insisted on, never vied from. It remains to this day immutable.
"I did not hear the gun shots"
Why?
Have you ever walked down the street or better yet been on a subway platform and there is a loud jingle of metal as an item falls to the ground albeit a cell phone or a key ring with keys affixed. You are walking behind the sound and it pierces your ears and yet the culprit of the sound, the person whose keys or cell phone it is doesn't hear the clatter. Does hear it!
You pick the item up and return it to its rightful owner and they are momentarily confused. They didn't know the item was out of their possession,
But how could they not know, you ask. Because.....they didn't expect it. They had no reason to listen for it and they were sufficiently engaged in other matters to not hear it and certainly even if something got through to their oratory faculty, they didn't associate the sound with anything that they might be concerned with. They had more important things to hear and think about then the sound of the metal hitting the pavement or the sound of a gun shot going off somewhere in their vicinity. In this case Mazoltuv was involved with her daughter and husband as they formed a momentary bond, swinging the child between them, laughing, enjoying once again that special moment of being together. She didn't hear the gun shots because she didn't exect them and she didn't expect them because she had nothing to do with the arrangements that led to her estranged husband's demise.
The beginningof this trial, the end and everything in between does not make a pretty story. It is not just the trial that is so dreadful but the ultimate result with Mazltuv found guilty as an accomplish to the murder, her daughter at large surrounded by a paucity of love and understanding and women everywhere being given the message once again that if and when your husband or an uncle sexually assaults your child and you complain;
Beware
Your actions might lead to a life time of incarceration or worse.
Linda Zises
Anatomy of a Murder trial.
The accused is Mazoltuv Borukhova a 35 year old Physician, a very attractive small thin woman with extraordinary long flowing black hair and a face, a physical demeanor that conveys confidence, competence, compassion and unfaltering courage to meet whatever challenge the trial and beyond might bring to her life. Her destiny is in the hands of lawyers, a not impartial judge, witnesses, the jurors, none of whom seem to understand her and most of whom were convinced of her guilt before the trial began.
Janet Malcolm chose to focus on the travesty of justice afforded Mazoltuv, a fascinating emotionally draining story of seemingly unlimited scope. I chose to examine the particulars, as presented by Janet to see how this crime, whoever committed it was compelled by circumstances that forced the issue. The child's father, the former husband, had to be stopped. But why?
This true story emerges from the tightly knit ethnic group of Jewish people known as the iphigenia Jews identified by their distinctive clothes, distinctive way of life. They have strict rules seldom broken that encompass how the men and women relate to one another in public ( they don't hold hands nor show any display of physical contact). They are intensely private people living within their group(cult). Imagine the trauma afforded this ethnic group when one of their own is murdered. Murdered in plain sight of his young, four year old daughter whom he was meeting to take from her mother to his home for parental visitation. The crime was unthinkable. The public exposure of ways and customs of this cult, unbearable.
There is a long and ugly history of fathers who sexually abuse their daughters. In the film An Americian Haunting 2006 , reviewed below, the underlying theme is the sexual deflowering of the budding teenage daughter who then goes crazy with all the hysteronics that horror flicks champion. What was less than appealing to a mature adience, the horror flick excitement, was more than made up for by the performance of Sissy Spasak who played the suffering Mother with such perfection that she left no doubt in my mind that I know this mother, I know her and so do we all. She is fully aware of her husband's night time sexual escapades, her husband's nightly assault on their daughter and chooses to look away thus by omission allowing him to abuse the one person she wanted to protect. There is an ending to this situation. The father dies. He dies and the film ends. The symptom vanishes covered up by all the right phrases, sentiments apologies. But the problem remains. Fathers who express their love for their daughter through unacceptable sexually compelled acts of physical violation. that is the issue, the problem that remains taboo, almost unspeakable.
A third exposure of this theme is the recently shown film (on Cable)The Color of Rain. The husband, a judge by profession who gets a young heroin addict pregnant and she has the baby which he then takes as his own. He makes of the baby's mother, a weekly babysitter for which the mother must pay with sexual favors that she can't afford to deny. Not if she wants to see her daughter, to spend time with her.
In this case the young girl becomes a hero of sorts. She doesn't go to the police as Mazoltuv tried to do And she doesn't arrange for anyone to be killed. She is not a doctor, she is a street person, without professional credentials and she does what she has to do to save her daughter. She kills her. She takes a pillow and weeping quietly, she suficates her baby daughter into the quiet more tolerable hereafter.
What does Mazoltuv do? That question can not be satisfactorily answer because the fact of her husband repeatedly playing with their daughter's vagina did not get the attention such a crime by a grown professional man, whatever his religion or occupation, deserves or rather must have.
And further........
The item which proved to me beyond a doubt that Mazoltuv was not guilty of sanctioning the murder of her husband in pain sight of her daughter and friends was the one detail in the trial no one could explain.
Why did Mazoltuv fail to hear the gun shots when her husand was shot and killd? The gun had its silencer in place for the first shot but then the silencer was dislodged and the next two shots were heard by people far from the crime scene. Only Mazoltuv who was right there, bending over her estranged hsuband's body did not hear them. This detail Mazoltuv insisted on, never vied from. It remains to this day immutable.
"I did not hear the gun shots"
Why?
Have you ever walked down the street or better yet been on a subway platform and there is a loud jingle of metal as an item falls to the ground albeit a cell phone or a key ring with keys affixed. You are walking behind the sound and it pierces your ears and yet the culprit of the sound, the person whose keys or cell phone it is doesn't hear the clatter. Does hear it!
You pick the item up and return it to its rightful owner and they are momentarily confused. They didn't know the item was out of their possession,
But how could they not know, you ask. Because.....they didn't expect it. They had no reason to listen for it and they were sufficiently engaged in other matters to not hear it and certainly even if something got through to their oratory faculty, they didn't associate the sound with anything that they might be concerned with. They had more important things to hear and think about then the sound of the metal hitting the pavement or the sound of a gun shot going off somewhere in their vicinity. In this case Mazoltuv was involved with her daughter and husband as they formed a momentary bond, swinging the child between them, laughing, enjoying once again that special moment of being together. She didn't hear the gun shots because she didn't exect them and she didn't expect them because she had nothing to do with the arrangements that led to her estranged husband's demise.
The beginningof this trial, the end and everything in between does not make a pretty story. It is not just the trial that is so dreadful but the ultimate result with Mazltuv found guilty as an accomplish to the murder, her daughter at large surrounded by a paucity of love and understanding and women everywhere being given the message once again that if and when your husband or an uncle sexually assaults your child and you complain;
Beware
Your actions might lead to a life time of incarceration or worse.
Linda Zises
Thursday, April 29, 2010
[blackfemlens] The Usual Suspects: Arizona and the Black/Latino Divide
By Sikivu Hutchinson
As soon as Arizona’s fascist anti-immigrant SB1070 legislation passed, black civil rights leaders from Jesse Jackson to California Assembly member Karen Bass roundly condemned it. The toxic national climate couldn’t be more primed for this law. In recent months, the high octane atmosphere of jingoistic racism, xenophobia and Manifest Destiny posturing amongst white zealots and the legislators who shill for them has become standard order. Now that the nation is in an uproar over SB1070, civil rights coalitions have begun trying to mobilize African American opposition to the Bill by linking black social justice activism with the immigrant rights movement.
However, when it comes to immigration rights and reform, there is a pronounced disconnect between black leadership and average black folk. In the L.A. African American Conservative Examiner respondents expressed support for SB1070. One believed that if similar laws were enacted in California it would be a deterrent to attacks on African Americans by Mexican immigrants. On the liberal to moderate The Grio website some black posters sounded off about bearing the brunt of racial discrimination, yet saw little connection between their experiences and an authoritarian crackdown on Arizonans of color under the legislation. Living elbow to elbow with Latinos in the same socioeconomically depressed communities, black anxiety over interracial violence and social/demographic usurpation by Latinos in the low wage job sector has intensified. In cities where black and Latino day laborers compete for construction and home improvement jobs, white hiring preferences for Latinos have ignited controversy over racist stereotypes about lazy blacks versus hardworking Mexicans. In Los Angeles communities where predominantly black neighborhood schools have become majority Latino, social and classroom segregation between the two groups is a hard reality. The prevalence of Latino anti-black prejudice, ranging from “pigmentocracy” bias to caricaturing blacks as backward and “ghetto,” is a recurring complaint among some African American youth. Further, the perception that Latino organizations don’t support African American activism around such issues as racial profiling and police brutality has long fueled mainstream black wariness of black/Latino coalition building.
It is little wonder then that during last month’s Washington D.C. immigration reform protests there was a notable dearth of black participation. According to the online magazine The Root, immigrants of African descent purportedly don’t participate in immigrant rights activism because of class differences with Latin American immigrants. African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants who come to the U.S. legally on H1-B or student visas may perceive immigration reform as a “Latino phenomenon.” Seeking professional careers, many don’t identify with the socioeconomic desperation that motivates undocumented Latin American workers and families to come to the U.S.
Homegrown black support for or ambivalence about the Arizona law is symptomatic of a deep vein of frustration, anger, cultural resentment and xenophobia. Study after study indicates that African Americans are the most residentially segregated, suffer the greatest discrimination in job application and employment and are amongst the biggest recipients of predatory mortgage loans. Fifty-six years after Brown v. Board there is greater social isolation between African Americans and whites in comparison to other racial groups. And white backlash to Obama’s election continues to illustrate the intractability of post-Jim Crow racism.
Because of the legacies of slavery and racial apartheid, the word “nigger” is still the universal signifier for dehumanization and otherness. For this reason, black liberation resistance has always been based on the struggle for recognition of both African American humanity and the basic right to citizenship. So there has always been a visceral yearning amongst black folk to wake up one morning and not be the ultimate other. A yearning to truly be considered a “native” son or daughter in a global empire based on forced African American immigration.
For many working class African Americans who see the gains of the civil rights era smoldering in the ashes of staggering unemployment, incarceration and high school drop-out rates, the plight of recently arrived undocumented immigrants does not register as a cause for solidarity. Ignorant of the bloody history of European imperial conquest of the Southwest, African Americans selectively lap up the white nationalist “taking back our country” swill at their peril. Creating a pure police state to "protect" (white) citizens from government coddled illegals and welfare leeches is part of the same old divide and conquer dynamic that allows the way white elites profit from illegal immigrant labor and low wage black labor to go unexamined.
Recently, a white Alabama Republican gubernatorial candidate called for the state’s driver license exam to be given in English because, "If you want to live here, (you need to) learn it." This nativist attempt to secure the borders of the new Confederacy is a harbinger of public policy that hearkens back to the literacy tests, poll taxes and other disfranchising regimes of Jim Crow. Word to ambivalent black folk—the narrative of nationhood, when spun by white supremacists, will never include you, no matter how Anglo your sur (read, slave) name or how “un-inflected” your English is. In the lynch mob mentality of some law enforcement, SB1070’s mandate for investigation with “reasonable suspicion” will always mean you.
As soon as Arizona’s fascist anti-immigrant SB1070 legislation passed, black civil rights leaders from Jesse Jackson to California Assembly member Karen Bass roundly condemned it. The toxic national climate couldn’t be more primed for this law. In recent months, the high octane atmosphere of jingoistic racism, xenophobia and Manifest Destiny posturing amongst white zealots and the legislators who shill for them has become standard order. Now that the nation is in an uproar over SB1070, civil rights coalitions have begun trying to mobilize African American opposition to the Bill by linking black social justice activism with the immigrant rights movement.
However, when it comes to immigration rights and reform, there is a pronounced disconnect between black leadership and average black folk. In the L.A. African American Conservative Examiner respondents expressed support for SB1070. One believed that if similar laws were enacted in California it would be a deterrent to attacks on African Americans by Mexican immigrants. On the liberal to moderate The Grio website some black posters sounded off about bearing the brunt of racial discrimination, yet saw little connection between their experiences and an authoritarian crackdown on Arizonans of color under the legislation. Living elbow to elbow with Latinos in the same socioeconomically depressed communities, black anxiety over interracial violence and social/demographic usurpation by Latinos in the low wage job sector has intensified. In cities where black and Latino day laborers compete for construction and home improvement jobs, white hiring preferences for Latinos have ignited controversy over racist stereotypes about lazy blacks versus hardworking Mexicans. In Los Angeles communities where predominantly black neighborhood schools have become majority Latino, social and classroom segregation between the two groups is a hard reality. The prevalence of Latino anti-black prejudice, ranging from “pigmentocracy” bias to caricaturing blacks as backward and “ghetto,” is a recurring complaint among some African American youth. Further, the perception that Latino organizations don’t support African American activism around such issues as racial profiling and police brutality has long fueled mainstream black wariness of black/Latino coalition building.
It is little wonder then that during last month’s Washington D.C. immigration reform protests there was a notable dearth of black participation. According to the online magazine The Root, immigrants of African descent purportedly don’t participate in immigrant rights activism because of class differences with Latin American immigrants. African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants who come to the U.S. legally on H1-B or student visas may perceive immigration reform as a “Latino phenomenon.” Seeking professional careers, many don’t identify with the socioeconomic desperation that motivates undocumented Latin American workers and families to come to the U.S.
Homegrown black support for or ambivalence about the Arizona law is symptomatic of a deep vein of frustration, anger, cultural resentment and xenophobia. Study after study indicates that African Americans are the most residentially segregated, suffer the greatest discrimination in job application and employment and are amongst the biggest recipients of predatory mortgage loans. Fifty-six years after Brown v. Board there is greater social isolation between African Americans and whites in comparison to other racial groups. And white backlash to Obama’s election continues to illustrate the intractability of post-Jim Crow racism.
Because of the legacies of slavery and racial apartheid, the word “nigger” is still the universal signifier for dehumanization and otherness. For this reason, black liberation resistance has always been based on the struggle for recognition of both African American humanity and the basic right to citizenship. So there has always been a visceral yearning amongst black folk to wake up one morning and not be the ultimate other. A yearning to truly be considered a “native” son or daughter in a global empire based on forced African American immigration.
For many working class African Americans who see the gains of the civil rights era smoldering in the ashes of staggering unemployment, incarceration and high school drop-out rates, the plight of recently arrived undocumented immigrants does not register as a cause for solidarity. Ignorant of the bloody history of European imperial conquest of the Southwest, African Americans selectively lap up the white nationalist “taking back our country” swill at their peril. Creating a pure police state to "protect" (white) citizens from government coddled illegals and welfare leeches is part of the same old divide and conquer dynamic that allows the way white elites profit from illegal immigrant labor and low wage black labor to go unexamined.
Recently, a white Alabama Republican gubernatorial candidate called for the state’s driver license exam to be given in English because, "If you want to live here, (you need to) learn it." This nativist attempt to secure the borders of the new Confederacy is a harbinger of public policy that hearkens back to the literacy tests, poll taxes and other disfranchising regimes of Jim Crow. Word to ambivalent black folk—the narrative of nationhood, when spun by white supremacists, will never include you, no matter how Anglo your sur (read, slave) name or how “un-inflected” your English is. In the lynch mob mentality of some law enforcement, SB1070’s mandate for investigation with “reasonable suspicion” will always mean you.
Harry Brown: A Man with a Mission!
Daniel Barber
Starring: Michael Caine (born 1933) Veteran Actor of Note.
and Emily Mortimer, Charlie Creed-Miles.
Plot Vigilante justice: London City streets clean up.......... for the moment!
Michael Caine's stellar performance is the high point of the film, Harry Brown. The low point is everything else. This is a film that humbles us all by its omission of the names, identity, history of those Harry Brown(Michael Caine) chooses to murder in cold blood because they are interfering in the enjoyment of his less than idyllic life style.
His vigilante solution to the social problems of the London youth who are unemployed permanently due to lack of jobs and poor education and the strength of the English caste system(although they don't call it that) reduces us all to infinitesimal specks in this densely populated, colossally huge World.
It is frightening to think that any major film company would spend over 100 million dollars to put on the screen a film of this dubious quality and anticipate a profit. I know this vigilante type behavior has been sanctioned with the bombing of Iraq and Pakistan and Afghanistan and the Drone plans but there is still something grotesque in the shooting in cold blood without due process and hopefully there always will be.
This display of random killing without personal provocation earns my award for "shame on you" films that should never have been made.
Warning: This film might incite dangerous/unacceptable/anti-social behavior in those Under 21 and those particularly prone to mimicry
Starring: Michael Caine (born 1933) Veteran Actor of Note.
and Emily Mortimer, Charlie Creed-Miles.
Michael Caine's stellar performance is the high point of the film, Harry Brown. The low point is everything else. This is a film that humbles us all by its omission of the names, identity, history of those Harry Brown(Michael Caine) chooses to murder in cold blood because they are interfering in the enjoyment of his less than idyllic life style.
His vigilante solution to the social problems of the London youth who are unemployed permanently due to lack of jobs and poor education and the strength of the English caste system(although they don't call it that) reduces us all to infinitesimal specks in this densely populated, colossally huge World.
It is frightening to think that any major film company would spend over 100 million dollars to put on the screen a film of this dubious quality and anticipate a profit. I know this vigilante type behavior has been sanctioned with the bombing of Iraq and Pakistan and Afghanistan and the Drone plans but there is still something grotesque in the shooting in cold blood without due process and hopefully there always will be.
This display of random killing without personal provocation earns my award for "shame on you" films that should never have been made.
Warning: This film might incite dangerous/unacceptable/anti-social behavior in those Under 21 and those particularly prone to mimicry
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Debunking the Myth of a Colorblind France
By Sounia Johnson
In the early 1930’s many African American artists fled to Paris in order to escape racial inequalities and the constant oppression and dehumanization they experienced in the United States. “ Liberty, Fraternity and Equality,” a motto celebrating freedom that traces its roots in the French Revolution, attracted many African American expatriates such as James Baldwin and Josephine Baker, who found acceptance in what they perceived as a generous France -- liberal, receptive and a champion of social equality and civil rights.
Unexpectedly, a different reality was observed by world renowned American essayist James Baldwin. Baldwin witnessed the deep hatred toward and unequal treatment of French North Africans. Baldwin pledged his support of Algerians (referring to them as Paris’s niggers) while vehemently opposing the way the white French would treat minorities, thereby debunking the notion of colorblind liberal France.
It is thus not surprising that the widely held belief of a romanticized France does not hold any credibility for the many disenfranchised North Africans whose voices are consistently marginalized. The recent 2005 riots in France’s most underprivileged cities have been the result of ongoing racial and ethnic tensions. These tensions have highlighted the profound disconnect between the French Republic and overwhelmingly disenfranchised French Muslim youth, who are frustrated with being constantly marginalized as radical Muslim thugs, and not being given equal treatment as their white French counterparts.
Circumscribed access to education for the French-Magrehbi youth who mostly reside in insalubrious conditions housed in HLMs (Habitations De Loyer Modéré), commonly referred to as subsidized low-rent housing located in heavily Pan-African suburbs, is reflective of an unprecedented ghettoization not found anywhere else in Europe. These developments mirror housing projects found in American’s most underserved urban areas. The high unemployment rate— which in turns leads to juvenile delinquency amongst a frustrated urban youth— has led many young Muslims to fall prey to religious radicalism, with all the negative political implications this entails for France and the war against terrorism.
The problems are endless but are rooted in the fact that the French-Maghrebi youth cannot find sustainable employment due to lack of formal education and immeasurable social ills that have plagued and paralyzed young French North Africans into a dark abyss with no hope in sight...CONTINUED http://blackfemlens.blogspot.
Sounia Johnson is a French Algerian Los Angeles based correspondent for the North African Journal. Her perspectives on racism in France, as well as issues related to French-North African relations in Europe and French-Algerian life stand peerless. Follow this clever, adroit young writer.
In the early 1930’s many African American artists fled to Paris in order to escape racial inequalities and the constant oppression and dehumanization they experienced in the United States. “ Liberty, Fraternity and Equality,” a motto celebrating freedom that traces its roots in the French Revolution, attracted many African American expatriates such as James Baldwin and Josephine Baker, who found acceptance in what they perceived as a generous France -- liberal, receptive and a champion of social equality and civil rights.
Unexpectedly, a different reality was observed by world renowned American essayist James Baldwin. Baldwin witnessed the deep hatred toward and unequal treatment of French North Africans. Baldwin pledged his support of Algerians (referring to them as Paris’s niggers) while vehemently opposing the way the white French would treat minorities, thereby debunking the notion of colorblind liberal France.
It is thus not surprising that the widely held belief of a romanticized France does not hold any credibility for the many disenfranchised North Africans whose voices are consistently marginalized. The recent 2005 riots in France’s most underprivileged cities have been the result of ongoing racial and ethnic tensions. These tensions have highlighted the profound disconnect between the French Republic and overwhelmingly disenfranchised French Muslim youth, who are frustrated with being constantly marginalized as radical Muslim thugs, and not being given equal treatment as their white French counterparts.
Circumscribed access to education for the French-Magrehbi youth who mostly reside in insalubrious conditions housed in HLMs (Habitations De Loyer Modéré), commonly referred to as subsidized low-rent housing located in heavily Pan-African suburbs, is reflective of an unprecedented ghettoization not found anywhere else in Europe. These developments mirror housing projects found in American’s most underserved urban areas. The high unemployment rate— which in turns leads to juvenile delinquency amongst a frustrated urban youth— has led many young Muslims to fall prey to religious radicalism, with all the negative political implications this entails for France and the war against terrorism.
The problems are endless but are rooted in the fact that the French-Maghrebi youth cannot find sustainable employment due to lack of formal education and immeasurable social ills that have plagued and paralyzed young French North Africans into a dark abyss with no hope in sight...CONTINUED http://blackfemlens.blogspot.
Sounia Johnson is a French Algerian Los Angeles based correspondent for the North African Journal. Her perspectives on racism in France, as well as issues related to French-North African relations in Europe and French-Algerian life stand peerless. Follow this clever, adroit young writer.
Rage: Sally Potter Does it Again!
"SALLY POTTER’S “RAGE” NOMINATED FOR BEST DRAMA
IN THE 14th ANNUAL WEBBY AWARDS "
This is wonderful news. Rage is a film with little action but there is something so riveting about the performance of several characters talking into the screen, telling their story, one actor at a time.
The technique is similar to Louis Malle's My Dinner With Andre
and the result is as memorable.
It was a rainy day at the library when I sat down to watch this film I thought I would see some at the library and the rest at home but that didn't happen. I sat in that uncomfortable wooden chair from beginning to end and later when I reviewed the film with a wealth of accolades I was told by a seasoned reviewer, Jeffrey Lions that he didn't like it. Not enough action.
Well, it was enough action for me and for the Webby Awards. And hopefully it will be enough action for you as well.
The star-studded line-up of actors includes Jude Law, Judi Dench, Dianne Wiest, John Leguizamo, Simon Abkarian and Steve Buscemi,
See it on DVD or watch for it in theaters. It might enjoy a return showing
Linda Zises
WBAI RAdio
Criticalwomen.net
Repost of original review
Rage Sally Potter DVD
RAGESally Potter Director/Writer (Orlando, 1992)
A young blogger at a New York fashion house shoots behind-the-scenes interviews on his cell-phone. In viewing the footage the audience is confronted with the process of marketing products, the brutal rise to the top in a sucessful company, and the use of perfumes to hide us from ourselves.
Commentary:
From the moment the film started I knew it was written by a woman because I identified with the method of writing, the typing, going back and forth to correct what was put up on the screen. This process drew me into the film and its theme of public versus private; of being famous and being invisible was a profound message. This is such a woman's issue, wanting to be seen, to be sexy and attractive while simultaneously wanting to be Invisible, to be "safe".
I loved the peeling of the onion layers approach to the plot, the change in the characters to reveal not the "I" but the "me" as they confront a moment of trauma, of inevitable reality with the death of one of their own.
I felt drawn to the story, the frightening look at fashion, at manipulation of words to promote a scent. A scent, a perfume for children! Is there nothing sacred, nothing pure, nothing of worth left now that the Internet captures the moment formerly private and sends it out into the Universe of the unknown.
I am not a script writer nor a film director but if I were I would want to have created this film.
Rage: As a film it works. As a live drama on Broadway it will also be tauted as great.
Linda Zises
WBAI Women's Collective
AGORA: The Rise of Christiantity While Rome Burns: and Women?
I don't remember when last religious furor by the holier than thou rise of Christianity was brought to the screen in a more powerful, convincing scene after scene to capture the horrific times of the end of the Roman Empire.
Alejandro Amenabar directs a powerful cast in a timely rendition of the collapse of the Roman Empire. Agora stars Rachel Whisz, Max Minghella and Oscar Isaac.
In a familiar view of what might happen again, this time in our own midst we are given an intimate rich view of the little known philosopher/scientist Hypatia whose legendary discoveries took 1200 years for the rest of human kind to embrace as Truth.
This unusual and compelling rendition of a subject we might not have known as it is put forth by Aejandro Amernabar is punctuated by the extraordinarily powerful acting that Rachel Weisz brings to the screen.
The final moments of Hypatia's life were so beautifully executed that this moment alone makes the film, Agora worth seeing.
Alejandro Amenabar directs a powerful cast in a timely rendition of the collapse of the Roman Empire. Agora stars Rachel Whisz, Max Minghella and Oscar Isaac.
In a familiar view of what might happen again, this time in our own midst we are given an intimate rich view of the little known philosopher/scientist Hypatia whose legendary discoveries took 1200 years for the rest of human kind to embrace as Truth.
This unusual and compelling rendition of a subject we might not have known as it is put forth by Aejandro Amernabar is punctuated by the extraordinarily powerful acting that Rachel Weisz brings to the screen.
The final moments of Hypatia's life were so beautifully executed that this moment alone makes the film, Agora worth seeing.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Tigar Next Door: powerful documentary
Camilla Calamandre Director producer
Tigar Next Door is a documentary I found almost impossible to watch even though I know it is true. Can Man and Aminal live together is a question that comes to the fore with this detailed exploration of man with tigar in a civilized setting.
Stories of Man in the Animal's world are and have been numerous, particularly fasinating to the young. But Tigar next Door is not for the young. It is heart wrenching, powerful struggle to continue to house and care for Tigars in our personal space. hard to imagine but Tigars are the intimate relatives of our feline house pets (who also have never been fully domesticated but they are small so I guess it doesn't it's okay to breed them and sell them to hopeful prespective parents.
The scene which really upset me more than all others was that of the Tigars' skins being thrown, discarded into a heap, a pile like all those bodies the Nazti's desposed of in the same dehumnized callous fashion ie. one upon the other.
It was at that point, that image, that I knew this is not a film for me. But it is an important film, important that we explore the atrocities that we, members of this civilized country, put forth day after day without comment.
Tigar Next Door is a documentary I found almost impossible to watch even though I know it is true. Can Man and Aminal live together is a question that comes to the fore with this detailed exploration of man with tigar in a civilized setting.
Stories of Man in the Animal's world are and have been numerous, particularly fasinating to the young. But Tigar next Door is not for the young. It is heart wrenching, powerful struggle to continue to house and care for Tigars in our personal space. hard to imagine but Tigars are the intimate relatives of our feline house pets (who also have never been fully domesticated but they are small so I guess it doesn't it's okay to breed them and sell them to hopeful prespective parents.
The scene which really upset me more than all others was that of the Tigars' skins being thrown, discarded into a heap, a pile like all those bodies the Nazti's desposed of in the same dehumnized callous fashion ie. one upon the other.
It was at that point, that image, that I knew this is not a film for me. But it is an important film, important that we explore the atrocities that we, members of this civilized country, put forth day after day without comment.
Director Camilla Calamandrei videotaping in the evidence storeroom at the US Fish and Wildlife office in Springfield, Illinois. Pelts, hides, skulls, gallbladders and other body parts were collected as evidence in a 18 month under cover investigation that led to the conviction of 16 men who were buying, selling and killing unwanted pet tigers and lions and then selling their meat and body parts. Photo Credit: Diane Zander.
DVD Release date: April 20th
Linda ZisesWBAI RAdio
Criticalwomen.net
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)