August 6, 2007. Volume VI, Number 32
A PROJECT OF THE CASCOGREENS
Paul Stephens, Editor and Publisher 406.216.2711 greateco@3rivers.net
Much of the content of this Bulletin is now being posted at http://greateco.blogspot.com/
Table of Contents:
UPCOMING AND ONGOING EVENTS
Hiroshima Anniversary today -- events in Missoula, Great Falls, Billings, and other cities
GOP Three-Pronged Effort to Permanently Control America http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorials/152
Start your own community radio station http://getradio.org
Startup kit for National Impeachment Centers http://www.bcimpeach.com/
Greens Put Mass Incarceration at Top of Agenda, While Democrats Mumble
http://www.BlackAgendaReport.com
Antiwar leader Sheehan says it’s war with Pelosi By Lincoln Anderson http://thevillager.com/villager_222/antiwarleadersheehan.html
TELL CONGRESS IT'S TIME TO IMPEACH GONZALES
http://www.usalone.com/impeach_gonzales.php
FROM DEMOCRACY NOW!
* Democrats Capitulate to President Bush As Congress OKs Giving Government
Broad New Powers To Conduct Warrantless Surveillance on American Citizens *
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/06/1340209
* Robber Baron Over the Last Century: Dow Jones Union Head on Likely New
Boss Rupert Murdoch *
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/02/1455200
* With New Internet and Cell Phone Rules, Federal Communications Commission
Approves Mass Sell-off of Public Airwaves *
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/02/1455207
* Following Minnesota Bridge Collapse, New Scrutiny for Nation's Ever-Privatizing Roads *
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/03/1348236
*In Search of John Doe No. 2: The Story the Feds Never Told About the Oklahoma City Bombing*
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/03/1348240
FROM FREEPRESS.NET
Dow Deal Stirs Skeptics http://www.freepress.net/news/25159
GREEN SOLUTIONS by Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens
Democrat leaders sacrifice democracy, the Constitution, and the future of the country in their lust for power and spoils, claiming that "Republicans did it first"
Good is Bad, or How to be an ethical person in a vicious, immoral society, or Don't "promote the general welfare." Bankrupt the welfare state
What motivates political activism?
Is the U.S. a terrorist state?
FILMS
Apocalypto Now! Marie Antoinette
FROM MAZIN QUMSIYEH
http://qumsiyeh.org/
http://justicewheels.org/
ENERGY ISSUES
The Power in the Carbon Tax
By Congressman John D. Dingell
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/01/AR2007080102051.html
Department of Energy Allowing America's Energy to Waste Away
Earthjustice http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/007/department-of-energy-allowing-americas-energy-to-waste-away.html
The Hidden Agenda behind the Bush Administration's Bio-Fuel Plan Buy Feed Corn: They’re about to stop making it… by F. William Engdahl http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6407
Are Your Cell Phone and Laptop Bad for Your Health? (Excerpts)
By Stan Cox http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/080107HA.shtml
Hugo Chávez
By Ignacio Ramonet
Le Monde diplomatique http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/080307G.shtml
ZNET COMMENTARY
US Social Forum - 2007 and After by Michael Albert
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=1&ItemID=13271
Part II: A (Hypothetical) Closing Talk for a Social Forum
A NOTE ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION
WEBSITES AND OTHER RESOURCES
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THE GREENS SUPPORT:
HEALTH CARE DOLLARS FOR HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS -- NOT INSURANCE COMPANIES AND CORPORATE PROFITS http://www.pnhp.org/
STOP THE WARS! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW! WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION ARE NOT A LOCAL GROWTH INDUSTRY!
COAL DEVELOPMENT MUST BE MINIMIZED, NOT MAXIMIZED: GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL!
END CORPORATE DOMINATION AND PREDATION: CORPORATIONS AREN'T PEOPLE, AND THEY DON'T HAVE "PROPERTY" OR OTHER RIGHTS! http://reclaimdemocracy.org/
For an introduction to Green Party philosophy and programs, go to http://www.gp.org/welcome.shtml
You can join the Montana Green Party at the NEW MONTANA GREEN PARTY WEBSITE!!
http://www.mtgreens.org/
Please read the Platform to find out what we support and oppose:
http://www.mtgreens.org/node/25
New section on Instant Runoff Voting with model bills/initiatives:
http://mtgreens.montanalinux.org/node/22
Please help us circulate petitions to regain our ballot status. Information is available at http://www.mtgreens.org/node/112
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UPCOMING AND ONGOING EVENTS
Today is the 62nd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima -- the first use of a nuclear weapon against a city and largely civilian population
Wednesdays, 5:30 to 6 pm, on the Great Falls Civic Center steps. Join the Quakers Peace Vigil. Also on August 6 at 8:30 pm, they are holding their 13th Hiroshima Commemoration on the banks of the Missouri River at Odd Fellow's Park (just south of Extended Stay hotel on River Drive).
A Gathering for Peace w/Justice on Hiroshima Day
Keynote Speech is "End it Now" by Paul Edwards, Aug 6th, 8:00 p.m., Missoula Rose Park. Missoulians, new groups accepted to present your Key Concern for HDay at the next planning meeting, 10 a.m. each Saturday at the GFS sidewalk cafeteria. See you then.
Hosted by Montana Partners for Impeachment, this event is the 'big tent' rally in Montana's main university town, protesting abuses of power by Bush & Cheney on the day of the world's most catastrophic event caused by humanity. Hiroshima Day pickets of Rep. Rehberg's anti-Constitution votes in Congress are being conducted at his Billings and Helena offices.
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From Montanans for Corporate Accountability
Just wanted to share this site with you. We might want to consider showing some of these films, or even duplicating the whole festival idea.
Cedron
http://www.countercorp.org/index.htm
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Why join the party?
We are circulating petitions to regain Green Party ballot status
Please help us circulate petitions to regain our ballot status. Print out petitions and other information at http://www.mtgreens.org/node/112 (You must log in first). Call 216-2711 or send me an e-mail greateco@3rivers.net, and I'll send you one to print out or copy, or contact Chris Frazier, MGP Secretary in Billings greenfuture2000@yahoo.com or Steve Kelly, MGP Coordinator in Bozeman at 586-0180 botanica@imt.net
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GREEN SOLUTIONS by Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens
Democrat leaders sacrifice democracy, the Constitution, and the future of the country in their lust for power and spoils, claiming that "Republicans did it first"
If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. That may be a common political maxim, but it would seem to apply just as well to the Democrats as to the Republicans.
Although some people must be born political, nurtured in the bosom of some particular party or ideology, that wasn't the case with me. Having come of age in the two decades following World War II, there was, of course, a strong bias against fascism, communism, and other forms of totalitarianism, along with the idea that "the Right" and "the Left" ("extremism") were equally wrong and destructive of liberty. As though to strike a balance with the "triumph of socialism" and liberal democracy in World War II, the McCarthy era followed close on its heels, denouncing everything Left and Progressive as being "anti-American".
Some of my older relatives bought into this, while others remained connected with New Deal and labor Democrats of the military-industrial complex for their political salvation. The elections of 1948 and 1952 foreshadowed what would happen a half-century later. Truman, a "war Democrat," Freemason, and strident anti-communist (as well as a hard-nosed veteran of Democratic "machine politics"), was thought to be a sure loser against the gang-busting moderate Republican, Thomas Dewey. But the Democrats had won the war as well as ending the Depression, which was widely blamed on "do nothing" Republican predecessors like Taft, Coolidge, and Hoover. The millions of veterans of foreign wars as well as the home-front war supporters (there were virtually no anti-war demonstrations after December 7, 1941) were not about to abandon the party which led them on to victory.
Truman won in 1948, but it was a hollow victory for the cause of Peace and Freedom. Soon, he enunciated the Truman Doctrine of "stopping Communism," wherever and however it might be advancing in the impoverished and devastated corners of the world, beginning with Greece and proceeding to Korea, "French Indo-China," and the Middle East. It was Truman who supported the displacement of the Palestinians by the refugee state of Israel, the anti-communist genocide in Greece, and the continuation of the Japanese-initiated occupation of Korea under American "supervision."
The Republicans learned an important lesson. They would have to run a war hero to regain the White House, and they did so in the person of General Eisenhower, who was much more of a real democrat than Truman could ever have imagined being. Eisenhower took America's mission of bringing freedom to the world very seriously. He was not about to be side-tracked by war profiteers or political machines created to perpetuate the evils of capitalism and imperialism.
Although the Republican Party functionaries who "drafted" him as their candidate did so for much more cynical motives, Eisenhower immediately began to assemble the global understandings which included an end to Imperialism, the self-determination of former colonies, and the political and economic equality which he believed was America's major contribution to history. Republicans retain that rhetoric today, with virtually no understanding of its substance. The idea that we are fighting for "democracy and self-determination" in Iraq is so ludicrous that no one but an imbecile could possibly believe it, but that is the face which has been put on the Iraq invasion and occupation. (They said much the same about Vietnam, and people were inclined to believe it then, since the artificially-created "North Vietnam" was nominally "communist.")
Needless to say, Eisenhower didn't have much luck with this American Crusade, alienating both Britain and France as former colonial powers which still wanted to retain their trade hegemonies, and barely averting a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union, although Eisenhower himself was on good terms with the Soviet leaders, and it was the CIA and other bunglers who promoted the policy of brinkmanship. China, which had been "lost" to Maoism by the bungling of (Democrat) descendents of missionaries and China traders like Roosevelt and Henry Luce (publisher of Time and Life Magazines, who had been born in China), posed no great threat to the mind of Eisenhower, and it was well after he retired that China became a nuclear power, commenced the Cultural Revolution, and finally became the global Titan it is, today -- in no small part because of its strong ties with the United States through immigration, trade, missionaries, and other cultural exchanges. Although China is the model of how we should have dealt with other "communist" adversaries like Cuba and North Korea, the successors of the Republicans who were responsible for it (Nixon and Kissinger) obviously learned nothing from that success.
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Good is Bad, or How to be an ethical person in a vicious, immoral society
Last week, I reprinted Paul Krugman's column about the Bush Administration's "Immoral Philosophy." (The New York Times http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/opinion/30krugman.html?hp
Here's the relevant quote:
[W]hat kind of philosophy says that it's O.K. to subsidize insurance companies, but not to provide health care to children?
Well, here's what Mr. Bush said after explaining that emergency rooms provide all the health care you need: "They're going to increase the number of folks eligible through Schip; some want to lower the age for Medicare. And then all of a sudden, you begin to see a - I wouldn't call it a plot, just a strategy - to get more people to be a part of a federalization of health care."
Now, why should Mr. Bush fear that insuring uninsured children would lead to a further "federalization" of health care, even though nothing like that is actually in either the Senate plan or the House plan? It's not because he thinks the plans wouldn't work. It's because he's afraid that they would. That is, he fears that voters, having seen how the government can help children, would ask why it can't do the same for adults.
And there you have the core of Mr. Bush's philosophy. He wants the public to believe that government is always the problem, never the solution. But it's hard to convince people that government is always bad when they see it doing good things. So his philosophy says that the government must be prevented from solving problems, even if it can. In fact, the more good a proposed government program would do, the more fiercely it must be opposed.
This sounds like a caricature, but it isn't. The truth is that this good-is-bad philosophy has always been at the core of Republican opposition to health care reform. Thus back in 1994, William Kristol warned against passage of the Clinton health care plan "in any form," because "its success would signal the rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the very moment that such policy is being perceived as a failure in other areas."
But it has taken the fight over children's health insurance to bring the perversity of this philosophy fully into view...."
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Obviously, this "logic" (or lack of it) is central to the contemporary Americans' view of government, and to the whole "two party system of denial and blame." Democrats don't want to have successful government policies or programs, either, but for a different reason: every failed Federal program creates a need for more Federal programs, building up another layer of bureaucracy and more "jobs" for the Democratic faithful. Now, the Republicans are following the same logic with military spending, energy policy, and the like, and many (if not most) civil servants have forgotten that it was the Democrats who "created" the government jobs which now sustain them.
Although wealthier taxpayers at first resisted "big government," in rhetoric against "tax and spend Democrats", they soon found out that most of the money was going to the professional class, and those with connections in Washington. Thus, the same Montana farmers, miners, and loggers who rail against Food Stamps, environmental protection, foreign aid (except for military aid, which is most of it), and "welfare queens" are totally comfortable receiving large cash payments when their crops fail, or when "the market price" of wheat isn't enough to cover "the cost of production" -- vastly inflated, of course, by chemical and "high-tech" production methods to produce food which people can't eat, or is unhealthy.
So, what do they do with these payments? They buy up their smaller neighbors creating corporate mega-farms which can have even greater influence in Washington as well as Helena, or if they are older, they sell out and move to the Sun Belt. I don't think Montanans have elected a Senator or Congressman in my lifetime who hasn't been a strong advocate for farm and corporate agribusiness subsidies.
Don't "promote the general welfare." Bankrupt the welfare state.
The big change came with the advent of the Neo-cons in the Reagan Administration. Using the discredited "Keynesian economics" of huge budget deficits to stimulate an already overheated economy, the strategy of "borrow and spend" by the Republicans soon became the order of the day. The national debt doubled, and doubled, again. Japan became the global industrial superpower, as millions of jobs were exported to Japan and the "Tiger Economies" of Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, and Malaysia, or even poorer Third-world countries in Africa, Latin America, or Asia. The psychotropic plants trade (opium, marijuana, and cocaine) became the main "engine of economic growth" for Latin America and southern Asia, while American taxpayers were spending more to stop it than on all foreign aid, combined.
At the same time, the word went out to "bankrupt the Welfare State" by massive increases in military spending -- especially procurement of ships and planes, anti-missile systems, and other preposterous technologies to shore up a superpower which soon would have no rivals. It was estimated that 70% or more of R&D spending in the 1980's was devoted to military applications, and the figure is probably not much different today. Instead of preparing for a future with declining resources and increasing challenges from pollution and global warming, our government was investing most of our technical resources into better ways to kill and avoid being killed by real or imagined "enemies." And they call peace people paranoid!
A corollary "benefit" of this vast expansion and projection of our military power was to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union (amidst promises that world nuclear disarmament and the channeling of military resources to civilian needs - the "peace dividend" - would follow directly). Millions of former "labor Democrats" and the liberal professional class defected to join the glamorous Hollywood "Reagan Revolution." No matter that this was the turning point for the collapse of American values and institutions. Republicans still revere this blatant fraud, imposter, and Alzheimer's-stricken front-man, believing that all they need to do to win an election is to invoke the rhetoric and imagery of Ronald Reagan. George W. Bush was one of the converted. The best way to understand the Bush "magic" is to think of it as Reaganism on steroids, just as the Bush economic policies are "Keynesianism on steroids."
It was the Clinton Democrats who followed (or at least tried to follow) the correct policies of eliminating 600,000 federal jobs and attempting to rationalize existing programs for maximum efficiency, while balancing the budget and actually paying down the debt to some limited extent. Of course, it took tax increases for the wealthy to accomplish this, but everyone benefited from a stronger economy and a return to relative sanity in political decision-making. One can only marvel at the perversity of the corporate media as it continues its slavish subservience to the corporate globalization mafia in spinning and withholding the correct information from American voters so that the Republicans could lie and steal their way back into the White House in 2000 and 2004. The rest, as they say, is history. Just leave it to the Democrats to once again nominate as their presidential candidate the person most resembling Bush and Reagan, and thus the least capable of bringing about any meaningful reforms. -- PHS
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What motivates political activism?
Like most people of my generation, I became politically active during the Vietnam War. But it was not anti-war activism. Having grown up in a military town and a largely military family, I was decidedly pro-military. Several of my closest friends in college were sons of career officers, including a general and an admiral. Needless to say, we weren't involved in any peace demonstrations. Although we detested the Johnson Administration and Democrats in general, we were equally opposed to the "moderate" Rockefeller Republicans, the Council on Foreign Relations, and similar groups which purported to further America's "mission" in the world.
What, then, motivated me to become politically active? It was basically a love of freedom and a fear of and contempt for government - amplified considerably by my first arrest and experience with the "justice" system in 1971. I had no desire to become part of the "ruling elite", which I was already very alienated from, although my family on both sides had good claims to being part of it. The more I learned about government and how it worked, the more ridiculous it seemed. I was always a libertarian, and finally an anarchist. And as I studied economic theory, hoping to contribute something to our understanding of where the American economy and those who controlled it had gone wrong, and what was needed to fix it, I became increasingly opposed to any sort of centralized planning, authority, or power based on economic status and controlled by traditional elites. My intellectual roots were egalitarian, farmer-labor populism, and the usual sort of propaganda of the "melting pot," a nation of immigrants fleeing persecution and the ravages of war which drove most of our ancestors out of Europe for a new beginning in America.
Although I remained in favor of some sort of "meritocracy" which uses the best scientific and technical knowledge (including the social sciences) to improve and perfect the human condition for everyone, it became increasingly obvious that few if any established authority structures were actually engaged in a similar enterprise. I was a teenager when films like "Dr. Strangelove" and "Fail Safe" were made, so the nuclear issue loomed large in my childhood - in part because my hometown became the first Air Force base to host the nuclear-armed Minuteman strategic missiles, remembered (and still operational nearly 50 years later!) as President Kennedy's "Ace in the hole" during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
One main difference between then and now is that we also had one of the best locally-owned and published daily newspapers (2 of them, one Democrat and one Republican, but owned by the same Warden family) in the country, the Great Falls Tribune. In early stories about the Minuteman installations, it never failed to refer to them as "dangerous" and "incredibly risky." And it was totally unionized (along with virtually every other business in town). I mark the beginning of the Great Falls' decline with the sale of the Tribune to Minneapolis-based Cowles family/Minneapolis-Star Tribune in 1964. For nearly 30 years, we chafed under their "pro-business," union-busting corporate globalization regime, only to meet a worse fate when Gannett bought the Tribune in the early 1990's. After doing some research, I found that Cowles was purchased by McClatchy (the Sacramento Bee) in 1998. Everything but the Star-Tribune was sold off, but it, too, was sold last December to the Avista Capital Group for less than half of the $1.2 billion which McClatchy paid for it. McClatchy also bought Knight-Ridder, the second-largest American newspaper chain (after Gannett), sold off many of the best of those papers (including the San Jose Mercury News), and like most of the "newspaper industry," faces declining sales and revenues in the face of internet competition.
The whole point of newspapers in a free, democratic society is to be independent, locally-owned, democratically managed, and to be a watchdog on government, business, and all other aspects of our public life. Needless to say, few if any (even among the so-called "alternative press") continue to do this. If they are organized as profit-making corporations, there is little chance that they will "question authority" or be anything more than a propaganda organ for whatever coalitions of organized interests control them. More than any other single factor, it is the consolidation of the news media which is responsible for our decline into corporate fascism and rule by the media monopolies (which are perhaps the only "winners" in the election game as it now exists).
It was only fairly recently - say, the last decade or so - that I discovered that most people are politically active for quite different reasons. Perhaps they all possess the competitive sports instincts which I have always lacked. Their view is similar to the military maxim that "there is no substitute for victory." Long-term goals, like expanding freedom and justice, equality and opportunity, cultural enrichment and diversity, expanding the social safety net - in short, creating a better life for all - seems to be no part of the Republican or Democratic agenda, although each party selectively uses some of the rhetoric in favor of those things.
For working-class Democrats and disadvantaged minorities, there is some concern for social justice and "good jobs," while the Republicans largely rely on the mythology of "free enterprise," American supremacy, and the protection of the wealthy from those who question or oppose their exalted status. The leadership of both parties is cynical beyond description. They are panderers using the same mass psychology of the advertising agencies to "sell" their (non-existent) programs to a credulous, uninformed, and brainwashed voting population. Huge sums of money are spent on pure propaganda, and in discovering what particular myths and lies various voting groups already believe, so that the candidates can appeal directly to their fears and prejudices. It is such a mockery and caricature of what democracy really is that half or more of the eligible voters think elections are a waste of time (if not a grave threat to their own privacy and moral scruples), and thus they fail to even register, fearing jury duty or more government surveillance of their personal lives and business. There is even talk of making voting compulsory, with a stiff fine for non-compliance! Is this what we mean by "democracy?"
The Republicans think that more people voting is contrary to their interests, so they oppose same-day registration and other efforts to enfranchise more people, but they needn't be too worried. Since the Democrats don't have any better policies or programs, and are controlled by the same corporate interests, it wouldn't make much difference which party wins, except for the spoils which are distributed according to party membership and contributions. The wiser special interests hedge their bets, and make sure they are on the donor lists of whatever candidates are victorious at the polls.
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Is the U.S. a terrorist state?
For the past several decades, the main focus of American-Israeli foreign policy has been "the War on Terror." But who are the terrorists? And why have we become the very thing we thought we were fighting against - a totalitarian state characterized by a vast state secret police, torture and assassinations, state-sponsored media monopolies, rigged elections, no independent judiciary, the highest percentage of prisoners (hostages) in the world, suppression of free speech and assembly, suppression of minority parties and other political organizations, etc. Internationally, we have become the most dangerous Rogue State, terrorizing and destroying any nation, party, or movement which protests our predations or dares question our authority and pre-eminence.
Most Americans don't understand how much our government and the corporate imperialists who control it are feared and hated in the rest of the world - especially in the Middle East. This is the Cradle of Civilization, but we have become the cradle-robbers and destroyers. How could this have happened?
Conspiracy theories certainly have a place here, although it is much more often a tacit conspiracy than one which has a positive organizational structure. Zionism is certainly a major factor, but nearly everyone claims to be against Zionism, and there is no organized Zionist conspiracy as such, unless it would be AIPAC and the Neo-cons (who are themselves more often merely responding to Stalinism and/or historical fears of persecution and anti-Semitism). Without the support of western imperialists (including most of the Nazis and other anti-Semites who were especially interested in ridding their own countries and economies of "Jewish bankers" and their corrupt, libertine culture by shipping them off to Israel), there would be no Israel or Zionist influence, today. Hitler is the true spiritual founder of the State of Israel, and implicitly recognized as such in the behavior of the present Zionist regime. It is clear that this is simply another case of Jewish people in general being scape-goated and co-opted to serve the interests of corporate imperialism and Gentile elites, including Freemasons and other secret societies and various Christian sects. Prior to the advent of Zionism, Judaism and Islam were natural allies against the Christian Crusaders and anti-Semites, and it is the policy of "divide and rule," first perfected by the British, that keeps the Middle East in turmoil today.
Universities, foundations, "think tanks," and other fabricators of corporate-imperialist propaganda are heavily implicated, so that controlling curricula, research agendas, and the like, as well as who they hire and fire, is a major preoccupation of the Terrorist State and its proponents like Lynne Cheney http://alternet.org/story/18587/ and Sen. Lieberman. It seems hard to believe that our elected officials and public institutions could focus on intellectuals like Ward Churchill and Mumia Abu Jamal as "the enemy," but we see that happening more and more frequently. -- Paul Stephens
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FILMS
Apocalypto Now, Marie Antoinette
By some perverse twist of fate, I checked out Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" along with Sophie Coppola's "Marie Antoinette" together last week. Both films are rather strange, personal visions of their respective makers, and neither seems to have been particularly successful at the box office. Still, they have a lot in common.
"Apocalypto" has no recognized actors (most are Mayan Indians) and is entirely spoken in a Mayan dialect (with subtitles). It is the story of a kind of Mayan Braveheart fighting in the pre-Columbian jungles against capture and enslavement by the sacrificial Pyramid Builders of Central America. As such, it is both historically inaccurate and culturally chauvinistic (which you may find especially offensive if you watch the DVD with Mel Gibson's commentary in place of the Mayan soundtrack). But the real meaning and significance of the film appears at the end, when the Blackrobe missionaries arrive to rescue the fleeing protagonist and his wife and children on the beach at Vera Cruz. There were some humorous as well as tragic references, say, to Pinochet's rounding up of "dissidents" in the soccer stadium (this time in the Mayan basketball courts, in which the losers were eaten or sacrificed to some pagan gods), and even to "Midnight Cowboy." When a line of captured prisoners marching to their doom is blocked by a falling tree, one of the bad guys thumps the tree, saying "I'm walking here" in good Dustin Hoffman form. No doubt a culturally broadening experience for Gibson, if not for the audience.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472043/
"Marie Antoinette, the rockstar musical" has somewhat different strengths and weaknesses. It is supposedly based on Antonia Fraser's version of her Life rather than Stefan Zweig's (I actually started reading the latter a couple of years ago), but with an aging Marianne Faithful as the Empress Maria Theresa and Rip Torn as Louis XV, what can we expect? Although there is a lot of opera in this film (befitting the Coppola tradition -- Sophie's grandfather was Concertmaster of the Met or something, as I recall), the soundtrack also lapses into 60's and 70's folk-rock, befitting the youth and exuberance of the characters. There is also a good portrayal of Marie's hippy commune, where she pretends to be a shepherdess living in bucolic simplicity - apparently her real character and interests - while her husband, the future Louis XVI, prefers to invent gadgets in his blacksmith's shop. A true sign of the times and portent of France's revolutionary future.
Even though it rivals or surpasses "Amadeus" in costumes and sets (the real Palace of Versailles and environs), the story itself is rather bland and boring, although a number of connections with contemporary France and global politics are brought out. The Swedes were apparently big players in pre- and post-Revolutionary France, and in this version, Count Fersen appears to be the father of Marie's only son, the Dauphin who was executed with the rest of the family during the Revolution. Fersen also fought with Lafayette in the American War against the British, and was awarded the Order of Cincinnatus by General Washington, himself. Cause, I suppose, for the Napoleonic Count Bernadotte, a Frenchman, becoming King of Sweden later on. We know for sure, though, that Marie bore no resemblance to Kirsten Dunst.
-- Paul Stephens
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0422720/
http://www.authorama.com/famous-affinities-of-history-ii-2.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_von_Fersen_the_Younger
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Jonathan Alter Is California GOP Trying to Steal the 2008 Election?
Newsweek writer Jonathan Alter says, "Our way of electing presidents has always been fertile ground for mischief. But there's sensible mischief - toying with existing laws and the Constitution to reflect popular will - and then there's the other kind, which tries to rig admission to the Electoral College for strictly partisan purposes. Mischief-makers in California (Republicans) and North Carolina (Democrats) are at work on changes that would subvert the system for momentary advantage and - in ways the political world is only beginning to understand - dramatically increase the odds that a Republican will be elected president in 2008."
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