Author: wilfred

This article in today’s NY Times made my Texan-born blood boil. Here’s the main gist:

Peggy Lee Penley’s marriage was going sour when she turned to her pastor. They had been friends for years and had started a Bible church together in Fort Worth. He was more than Ms. Penley’s spiritual shepherd, also serving as a licensed professional counselor, and had helped her before.

But Ms. Penley says that after she confided her sexual relationship with another man and her plans for divorce, the pastor, C. L. Westbrook Jr., disclosed her “biblically inappropriate relationship” to church elders. Mr. Westbrook eventually informed the full congregation of the church, CrossLand Community Bible, she says, shaming her publicly and urging members to discipline her by shunning her.

This hideous man abused his position as pastor and confidante and now wants protection for his ethical wrongdoing. What’s even worse is that the courts are on the whole refusing to get involved in such cases like these:

In Mississippi, the former wife of the governor sued her Episcopal priest and her church after learning that the priest had taped her admission of adultery for use against her in a custody case by her ex-husband. The case was dismissed.

 In Royal Oak, Mich., outside Detroit, a man who had left his church sued his pastor for revealing the confidence that he had been with prostitutes. That case was also dismissed.

Courts have had no trouble convicting religious figures of sexual misconduct, since the charges involve clearly secular actions that by their nature fall outside accepted religious practices.

Thank goodness these parishoners are refusing to lie down and be trampled by these faux-Christian wildebeasts. If we don’t stop this and stop it soon, 5 years from now I’ll be writing about the congregation that stoned a member and thinks they are immune from prosecution.

The terrific new documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated takes us into the murky world of American censorship. Not only is it murky because its critirea is so arbitrary but it is done entirely in secret, or at least it was until this film was released!

The director (the wonderful Kirby Dick) is on screen in the film as he hires a pair of detectives to find out who these people are and how they make their ratings. He and the detectives do a great job of finding out who these people are and Mr. Dick then weaves this in to other information he uncovers and puts it all into context. Why the secrecy?  It’s because they have something to hide of course.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) run for decades by Jack Valenti is a group in the film industry with government ties that self-regulates supposedly so the government won’t. This is really a joke because as it explained, if the government got involved there would be a judiciary branch to oversee abuses. As it is now there is no recourse if the MPAA gives your film an R or a NC-17. You can appeal but if you lose and get an NC-17 newspapers and television stations will not carry your ads so you have no way of reaching the masses. The same corporate entities that own the film industry also own much of that media.

Also important is that the media is now owned by 6 entities and their parent companies, they now literally own 90% of all mainstream media in the US. May I add yet again this is why we desperately need to bust media consolidation hard, we all lose with no competition and the power it gives these corporations is everything our Founding Fathers would weep over.
We learn so many things in the documentary, like who views and votes on the films and who sits on the appeals board. One of the most shocking is that there are 2 clergy members on the board and they vote even thought we are told officially that they don’t (always an Episcopalian and a Catholic priest).  We also learn via the South Park co-creator Matt Stone that independent films are treated much worse than Studio films (he has done both) and we learn that it is sex and not violence that is censored. There are so many horrendous scenes of violence in PG, PG-13, R and NC-17 films but it is the sex that freaks these censors. They say that one is not considered worse than the other but Mr. Dick shows that sex is 75% of what is objected to and violence only 25%.

There are wonderful filmmakers from Kimberly Pierce (Boys Don’t Cry) to John Waters as well as the actress Maria Bello who take their careers in their hands by talking on the record about their problems with the MPAA, the very board who will rate their next films. These brave people are to be applauded, in a time when people are afraid to speak out these people tell their stories.

A few former members of the ratings board speak out (although now they are made to sign something forbidding them from ever talking or writing about this, a true abuse of power in asking people to give up their first amendment rights). We find out there have not been any openly gay members of the ratings board and the director shows instances of gay sex in exactly the same form as straight sex side by side on screen, only the gay sex is always carries a stronger rating. Love is love and sex is sex but the ratings board thinks same sex is dirty or more objectionable (anyone sense the clergy here?). There are loads of film clips all throughout the film to illustrate and since many of these are explicit this documentary is given an NC-17!

Please check this film if it comes to your town and if it doesn’t then look for it on DVD or cable. It’s entertaining and incredibly informative. Here are a list of Theaters and Dates where the film will be playing.

The new documentary by Robert Greenwald “Iraq For Sale” starts off slowly but ends with a whallop. The film interviews a wide variety of people, from families of slain Americans, soldiers, as well as former private contractors of Halliburton. They speak of how the war profiteers have had a heyday like never before in the last 5 years. The website can be found HERE.

There are stories of how the contractors didn’t protect their workers and they are harrowing. The stories are told by the families of those who died as well as former contractors who survived the attacks. These are just one drop in a massive bucket of the lives lost and ruined by this dreadful war.

The most hard-hitting facts in the documentary appear in the section where former Halliburton and KBR employees talk about the massive fraud that these companies perpetrated on the American people, and their stories will make your blood boil. They include stories of the company’s managers driving $40,000 (and more) vehicles like Hummers and Escalades around the Kuwait compound, stories about trucks running empty in both directions in convoys to only feeding soldiers at select mealtimes because they are paid by the meal and not by the hour (this enabled them to be attacked during known mealtimes!). They accuse these companies of running up huge tabs under a system called Cost Plus that seem to give them unlimited freedom to spend.

The most moving part was the story of a man who is a  water purification specialist. He tells of finding no chlorine in water that the soldiers were bathing in every day. When he checked the water supply he found contamination in 63 out of 67 water sources. He breaks down in tears when he conveys that our soldiers were being exposed to malaria, typhus and he named several other things that sounded like parasites or worse. He wept as he said that soldiers would return to the US with these pathogens in their bloodstreams and would not even be aware of the danger they carry. I sat in shock listening to this. We’ll hear about this in years to come as our veterans become ill like in Vietnam and the Gulf War.

I do have a few quibbles with the documentary. First it starts off with what seems like a trailer for the film with an appearance by Mr. Greenwald that I found a bit jarring, it should have been cut out or put at the end over the credits. Also they interview Chris Lehane and Janice Karpinsky, both of whom I could live without ever having to listen to again. The second half of the film is more interesting than the earlier part, usually in a documentary there is too much footage to edit but in this case I think they should have shot more. Mr. Greenwald’s earlier films, “Outfoxed”, “Wal-Mart” and “Uncovered” were stronger overall but this film still has alot to recommend.

Are you as sick as I am of the 24/7 “JonBenet non-story” coverage? Then it is a good time to scratch this surface and see what squirms underneath. There is a fantastic piece at Slate today. Here is a taste:

This story allows us to fulminate against trivial problems while ignoring huge problems close to home, meanwhile wallowing in self-righteous porn babble: We are able to use the half-clothed bodies of children as centerfolds while professing shock that anyone would so display them.

For kids really do not fare very well in our culture: Millions of children are, in fact, abused in unspeakable ways. Five hundred thousand kids every year are classified as “throwaways” (children whose parents or guardians will not let them live at home, as distinguished from “runaways”). As many as 800,000 are beaten horribly. Even more are subject to emotional abuse and neglect. How much attention do they get? Instead, we focus our attention, almost all of it, on stranger-danger: things like abductions, of which there are between 100 and 200 annually. Our carefully controlled outrage is generated for our own purposes, certainly not to protect the children.

Then we get to an all important fact that our society wants swept right under the rug:

And when kids are indeed abused, who is doing it? Mom and Dad and Uncle Ted and Aunt May. As little as 2 percent of child abuse is committed by strangers. Again, why are we exercised over JonBenet?

We know who the boogeyman is, he is us when we are talking about women and children. Most women are attacked by those they know, not strangers. Their muderers are most often their own husbands or boyfriends but this doesn’t play well enough to the media who needs us in fear constantly. People are more easily swayed when they are afraid which is why corporations and our government wants us afraid. They are the ones trying to manipulate us, whether it is to by a new product or a government wanting more power and understanding that fear will be the mechanism by which people will hand it over to them.

Now that corporations own the media and there is little regulation as to how much they can own, a few of them are giving citizens the vast majority of what they ingest. Those same corporations give heartily to the Republican Party and their K Street representatives want more all the time. Right now Rove and the Administration want something, they want Iraq, Israel’s dismal failure and Bush’s fall from grace buried until the November elections and the JonBenet non-story is just the ticket. They are putting a mentally disturbed man front and center in an investigation that was full of holes from the get-go. My hunch is that the news organizations already know how weak the case is but push it loudly and we must begin to ask why.

There is every reason to believe that the corporate-owned media and their lobbyists want things from the government and right now there is something this Administration wants from them. If there is a deal made in hell being played out right now, it’s best to be on the lookout for it and to me this situation is not passing the smell test.
 

So you are asking yourself, why is a silly Nascar film being reviewed on a liberal website? The answer is that it’s a very funny satire of all things Bushco and a very savvy analysis of life in much of America circa 2006.

Will Ferrell co-writes and stars in this story of a poor kid from North Carolina who runs to the altar of fame and success in the blink of an eye and what happens when he lands there. The film even manages to make good fun of product placement and branding when they are already a parody in our everyday life.

You know you are in for a treat right away when the first thing you see is a hilarious fake quote attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt that kicks off the proceedings. From there we are taken on a tour of Bush’s way of not thinking through our times and the calamity that results.

I saw this film for the second time this weekend and have to say that it’s genius of Ferrell and his director/co-writer Adam McKay to take this journey through Bubba-land on one level while taking us on a very different trip just beneath it. There are a few overt clues that there is more going on than meets the eye, the French villian that turns to be anything but and the reference to Bush and Halliburton but they fly by so fast you have to catch them at the speed of the film which is edited like a Nascar race.

If you haven’t seen this already, rest assured you will be surrounded by laughter on both levels, whether it is a joke about male bonding on one hand or a shot of his rival reading “L’ Etranger” while driving 150 mph on the other. I’d love to give you a hundred examples of why this film is such brilliant satire but you need to experience them for yourself but the crowning moment is a prayer-laden dysfunctional dinner at his McMansion that is easily the best scene in any film so far this year.

I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to finally review a film here that is playing in everyone’s town instead of just the usual important films that play selected towns and then head to your Netflix queue. Congratulations to Ferrell, McKay and everyone involved in the smartest ‘stupid’ film of the year. I laughed my head off both times and walked out totally jazzed that Hollywood slid this one past the red states (it opened with a whopping 47 million gross last weekend and 23 more this one for a 70 milion total) and opened in that all important #1 place that is so satirized in this film.

Here is a scary little piece which shows again just what we should be concened about: the growing unholy marriage between extremist religion and politics. Just like the Islamist extremists who believe the Quran is to be literally translated (and we’ve seen how incorrect they are) we have the new Mega churches interpreting the Bible literally to disastrous results. World War Three anyone when the twains shall meet?

Here’s a slice:

The fastest-growing faith group in America, evangelical Christians have had a growing impact on the nation’s political landscape, in part because adherents believe conservative Christian values should have a place in politics — and they support politicians who agree with them.  In that March survey, more than 82 percent of the Ohio evangelicals who attend church at least once a week said they approve of bringing more religion into politics.

Sexton believes every word in the Bible, rejects evolution theory, and supports the  Iraq war, the Republican Party and Bush — in part because he is a born-again Christian. “I trust his opinion because of his beliefs,” she said. Signs of growth are everywhere at Fairfield Christian. The facilities will soon encompass 325,000 square feet — about twice the size of an average Wal-Mart superstore.

So where in the Bible does it say that Republicans have any beat whatsoever on politics? What did Jesus say about political parties? Yeah, keep searching Mr. Sexton.

Bush is Christian in name only. He’s a NeoCon in Christian clothing. All his countless acts to make the rich wealthier and increase the amount of US citizens (and their children)  living at or below the poverty level are very important clues for these totally clueless people, and don’t get me started about Bush’s bait-and-switch Saddam for Osama war dance that these idiots fell for hook line and sinker. It’s also apropos that they are building these complexes in the tradition of Wal-Marts because  just like Wal-Marts do, these Mega churches will leave Main Street USA in ruins.

Here’s a great film loaded with information for all of us who loved electric cars and thought the road would be full of them after the EV1 and others made their debut in the 90’s. It was mainly a California thing because that’s where it was madated by the California government. If you want to see the whole story please check out this film and its Wonderful website.

The film interviews people from all over the industry, from people at the car companies to government officials to the drivers themselves. The amount of information is considerable but it is presented perfectly in concise chapters so it is very easy to follow and always fascinating.

The history of the electric car is as old as the car itself. Not being much of a car buff I had no idea there were electric cars on the road 80 years ago. They interview people (Phyllis Diller for one!) who remember the cars back then which astonished me. From there we see the history of the car companies and how they tore up trolley tracks around the nation so the cities would become entirely car dependent.

The interviews with the people who built these cars and the drivers give us alot of the information on the history of California’s electric cars in the 1990’s and what happened. The film is set up beautifully with chapter headings asking the questions of the government, the auto industry, the public etc. and in the end it makes conclusions based on the evidence presented. There is also a wonderful interview with a husband and wife inventor team who have watched their battery technology buried by the auto industry. Watching this amazing American ingenuity be buried for corporate interests is downright criminal.

There is plenty of information that makes you want to be sure that these cars are mass produced and available to all income levels. One question I never understood was why other countries (like European ones) have not adopted the electric car when gas is so expensive per liter there. Also they discuss hydrogen vehicles and the information is very disturbing, these vehicles look like they won’t be on the road for many decades and may not be cost effective at all. This looks like a trap the oil companies are setting up to make sure we drive nothing but gas vehicles until the last drop of oil is taken out of the ground.

Be on the lookout for this documentary, it’s well worth your time.

I saw the film The Road To Guantanamo earlier this week. It is a horrifying tale of false imprisonment of three British Nationals in the months after September 11th. Here is a quick synopsis:

Known as the “Tipton Three,” Asif Iqbal, Ruhel Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul traveled to Pakistan for a wedding in September 2001, and then decided to continue on to Afghanistan to help with humanitarian aid efforts. Arriving just as U.S. forces had begun to attack, Asif, Ruhel and Shafiq (along with a fourth friend, Monir Ali, who went missing and is presumed dead) were soon swept up in the chaos of a war-torn country and picked up by the Northern Alliance as alleged Taliban fighters. Sent to Guantanamo, they were interrogated, tortured and held without charge for two years. Interweaving interviews with Asif, Ruhel and Shafiq with meticulous reenactments of their experiences, the film illustrates that in the War on Terror, there are bound to be innocent victims (Guantanamo currently holds 460 men on suspicion of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban, yet only 10 have been charged).

The film starts with 4 men going from England to Pakistan in October of 2001 as one of them is getting married. From there they are encouraged by the mosque they are sleeping at to go to Afghanistan to do charily work and help the poor Afghan Muslims who are being bombed and are in desperate need of everything. After a few weeks of utter chaos there they are trying to return to Pakistan when they are captured by the Northern Alliance and turned over to the Americans. Once in their hands they are branded ‘terrorists’ and sent to Guantanamo.

They are tortured endlessly for years before they are returned to Britain. I cannot tell you how utterly gut wrenching these scenes are and they are not filmed in an exploitative way. In any other hands but these director’s I think we would have seen even more violence and deprivation. The filmmakers have showed restraint where the men and women of Guantanamo have shown precious little. Still I cannot tell you how devastating these scenes are. Once you see this film Guantanamo can never be again a place you can tolerate on any level without speaking out to condemn it. The US is doing the most despicable things there on a daily basis and after 4 years they have only charged 10 people with any crime. The kharma of what we are doing is so horrible I can only wonder what will be headed our way next and by our own hand.

I encourage all of you to see the film when it comes to your city or town and to show it to anyone who will watch when it comes out on DVD.

The website for the film has alot more info and you can find it Here and the previous link above also has a wonderful Q&A with the directors.

By Pat Robert Fallwell

Floods, floods I tell you are hitting our center of government! And more are on the way.

I propose to you that there is one reason and one reason only why this is happening. The Lord is seeking his revenge on our corrupt and murderous government. Years of lying and duplicity have taken their toll and our dear Lord has had enough. The water is coming and will purify George Bush, Dick Cheney and every other miserable murderous sinner in our government. There is no running and there will be no hiding from His wrath.

Verily I say to you that the houses of our government and K Street lobbyists are being deluged with the cleansing water of our Lord’s retribution. No less than the National Securtity Agency is flooding from the basement up and the employees are running for their lives with their wretched laptops in their hands. Over 200,000 have been evacuated in the environs around our warmongering seat of power!

The Lord is finally speaking to our putrid center of power to punish the citizens of our modern day Soddom. Those who abuse power for profit and murder are to be punished once and for all. Those who go to the Watergate hotel to gamble and fornicate with fallen women and fallen men will meet their judgement early. Those who have stolen elections and legislated against the poor while also destroying our environment for generations to come will feel the full strength of our Lord’s disdain.

Those who tend to the business of a burning flag while rising numbers of children in the United States and beyond go to bed hungry will be punished severely. Those who seek to penalize men for simply loving other men while simultaneously feeding trillions of dollars into an eternal murderous war machine will find no shelter from their misdeeds.

As the Psalms say: “They that go down to the sea in ships: and occupy their business in great waters;” those men should know what they’re doing less they drown in a sea of their own greed, lust for power and take all of us down with them.

Make no mistake about it, our Lord and Savior has sent us a message to tell wayward Americans that their false idolatry of George W. Bush is wrong. This man thinks our Lord, Jesus Christ speaks to him and guides him as he wages his war for oil, profit and power by murdering the men, women and children of Iraq and neglects the poor and suffering of the United States. Verily I say to you he is a false prophet and our Lord does not speak to him or through him for he is more Anti-Christ than prophet and only leads us toward a World War III and nothing else.

Follow him at your eternal peril brothers and sisters. And pay the price if you do!

The new documentary film A/K/A Tommy Chong opened today in NYC. It chronicles the arrest and subsequent tale of the actor/comedian’s travails with post 9/11 justice in America. This shows what happens when an over-empowered Attorney General, in this case John Ashcroft, decides to spend 12 million plus to make an example of a man involved with marijuana in a world where we worry about being attacked by terrorists.

This is a jaw-dropper of a case and there are numerous talking heads interviewed to talk about the legal and social significance of this case. Alan Dershowitz, Bill Maher, Jay Leno and Cheech Marin among others are interviewed about the case and offer much outrage and perspective on Chong’s case, especially when combined with newsreel footage of Ashcroft and his  puritanical-appearing  minion.

From the films website:

a/k/a Tommy Chong chronicles the entrapment and incarceration of comedic legend Tommy Chong. Josh Gilberts film offers a sometimes frightening, often hilarious account of Operation Pipe Dreams, a nationwide drug paraphernalia sting operation spearheaded by former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

 After a fully armed SWAT team raided the 65 year-old comedian’s home in February of 2003, Tommy Chong was sentenced to 9 months in federal prison for conspiracy to manufacture and distribute drug paraphernalia through Chong Glass, a family business specializing in handmade glass water pipes, or “bongs.” Of the 55 defendants prosecuted, Tommy Chong was the only one with no prior convicitons to receive jail time. Justifying the 9 month sentance, the prosecutor cited the clasic 1978 movie Cheech & Chong film Up In Smoke as evidence that he had become wealthy “trivializing law enforcement efforts to combat marijuana trafficking and use.” As Roger Ebert said, “You do not have to approve of drugs to be offended.”

Chong is interviewed extensively and couldn’t be more endearing, truly a sweet and loving individual. In the coming attractions I saw a new documentary about the US vs. John Lennon when the Nixon Administration tried to expel Lennon from the country because he was critical of the Administration. It’s funny how free speech is something to be punished under right-wingers like Bush and Nixon. We won’t be rid of these folks for at least 2 and a half more years. After living through both the Nixon and Reagan years, it is so depressing to be reliving all this again under Bush. It’s way past time for change. I won’t sleep better knowing Tommy Chong did prison time after a massive sting operation for merely selling bongs yet Bin Laden roams free releasing tape after tape to laugh at us because of our Administrations indifference and incompetence.

cross-posted at Liberal Streetfighter