Tag Archives: On Politics

Big Money, Documentary, Nuclear Paranoia, On Politics

SIFF 2012: The Atomic States of America ***

August 9, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 26, 2012)

Remember the “No Nukes” movement that gained momentum in the mid to late 70s and then fizzed after Chernobyl proved that those DFHs may have been on to something after all? Good times. Lots of (irradiated) water passed under the bridge. Everyone got distracted by their iPhones. Fast-forward to the announcement in 2010 that the U.S. was going forward with construction of the first nuclear power plant in three decades; corporate America swooned over the “Nuclear Renaissance” (short memories). Then, as if on cue, Fukushima happened in 2011. The Atomic States of America is a timely eco-doc that could serve as a perfect wake-up call for anyone who may have failed to connect those dots (i.e., the jury is still out on the “safety” of this energy source).

Co-directors Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce build their case with a certain sense of urgency, reviewing the industry’s past sins and spotlighting present day travails suffered by communities adjacent to nuclear plants (like “cancer clusters”). Most importantly, the filmmakers boldly tackle the $64,000 question: How in the fuck did we get to this Bizzarro World scenario wherein the Atomic Energy Commission finds itself kowtowing to the nuclear power industry…instead of vice versa? Essential viewing.

Documentary, On Politics, War

Hear no evil, see no evil: Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today ***1/2

August 8, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on February 19, 2011)

These men saw no evil, spoke none, and none was uttered in their presence. This claim might sound very plausible if made by one defendant. But when we put all their stories together, the impression which emerges of the Third Reich, which was to last a thousand years, is ludicrous.

–Justice Robert Jackson (chief counsel for the U.S. at the first Nuremberg trial in 1946)

Herman Goring. Rudolf Hess. Hans Frank. Wilhelm Frick. Joachim von Ribbentrop. Alfred Rosenberg. Julius Streicher. Any one of those names alone should send a chill down the spine of anyone with even a passing knowledge of 20^th Century history. Picture if you will, all of those co-architects of the horror known as the Third Reich sitting together in one room (along with a dozen or so of their closest friends). This egregious assemblage really did occur, during the first of the Nuremberg trials (November 1945 to October 1946).

Through the course of the grueling 11-month long proceedings, a panel of judges and prosecutors representing the USA, the Soviet Union, England and France built a damning case, thanks in large part to the Nazis themselves, who had a curious habit of meticulously documenting their own crimes. The thousands of confiscated documents-neatly typed, well-annotated and (most significantly) signed and dated by some of the defendants, along with the gruesome films the Nazis took of their own atrocities, helped build one of the most compelling cases of all time.

By the time it was over, out of the 24 defendants (several of whom were tried in absentia for various reasons), 12 received a sentence of death by hanging, 7 were given prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life, and the remainder were either acquitted or not charged. One of the biggest fish, Herman Goring, ended up “cheating the hangman” by committing suicide in his cell (Martin Bormann, one of the condemned tried in absentia, had already beat him to the punch-although his 1945 suicide in Berlin was not confirmed until his remains were identified in a 1972 re-investigation).

Hollywood would be hard pressed to cook up a courtroom drama of such epic proportions; much less a narrative that presented a more clearly delineated battle of Good vs. Evil. Granted, in the fog of war, the Allies undoubtedly put the blinders on every now and then when it came to following the Geneva Convention right down to the letter-but when it comes to the short list of parties throughout all of history who have willfully committed the most heinous crimes against humanity, there seems to be a general consensus among civilized people that the Nazis are the Worst.Bad.Guys.Ever…right?

At any rate, this is why a newly-restored U.S. War Department documentary, produced over 60 years ago and never officially released for distribution in America (until now) may well turn out to be the most riveting courtroom drama that will hit theaters this year.

Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today (made in 1948) was written and directed by Stuart Schulberg, who had worked with John Ford’s OSS field photography unit, which was assigned by the government to track down incriminating Nazi film footage to be parsed by the Nuremberg prosecution team and help build their case.

Schulberg’s brother Budd (who later became better known in Hollywood as the screenwriter for On the Waterfront and A Face in the Crowd) was a senior officer on the OSS film team; he supervised the compilation of two films for the U.S. prosecutors; one a sort of macabre Whitman’s Sampler of Nazi atrocities, from the Third Reich’s own archives, and the other assembled from that ever-shocking footage taken by Allied photographers as the concentration camps were being discovered and liberated by advancing troops in early 1945.

Stuart Schulberg, in turn, mixed excerpts from those two films with the official documentation footage from the trial to help illustrate the prosecution’s strategy to address the four indictments (conspiring to commit a crime against peace; planning, initiating and committing wars of aggression; perpetrating war crimes; and crimes against humanity).

So why had Schulberg’s film (commissioned, after all, by the U.S. government to document a very well-known, historically significant and profound event in the annals of world justice) never been permitted open distribution to domestic audiences by same said government? After being shown around Germany in 1948 and 1949 as part of the de-Nazification program, extant prints of the film appeared to have vanished somewhere in the mists of time, with no documented attempts by the U.S. government to even archive a copy.

Even the man who had originally commissioned the film, Pare Lorentz (who at the time of the film’s production was head of Film, Theatre and Music at the U.S. War Department’s Civil Affairs Division) was given the brush off by Pentagon brass when he later petitioned to buy it and distribute it himself.

A 1949 Washington Post story offered an interesting take on why Lorentz had been stonewalled, saying that “…there are those in authority in the United States who feel that Americans are so simple that they can only hate one enemy at a time. Forget the Nazis, they advise, and concentrate on the Reds.” (there are several layers of delicious, prescient irony in that quote…so I won’t belabor it).

Stuart Schulberg’s daughter Sandra, along with Josh Waletzky, embarked on a five-year mission in 2004 to restore this important documentary. I should note that the term “restore”, in this particular case, does not necessarily refer to crystalline image quality; though they have done the best they can with what is purported to be the best existing print (stored at the German Film Archive).

They did have better luck with the soundtrack; they found what sounds to my ears to be fairly decent audio from the original trial recordings, which they painstakingly matched up as best they could to reconstruct the long-lost sound elements from the original. Voice-over narration has been re-recorded by Liev Schreiber, who is a bit on the dry side, but adequate .

It is chilling to hear the voices of these defendants; even if it is at times merely “jawohl” or “nein”- one hopes it is enough to give even the most stalwart of Holocaust deniers cause for consternation.

So what is the “lesson for today” that we can glean from this straightforward and relatively non-didactic historical document? Unfortunately, humanity in general hasn’t learned too awful much; the semantics may have changed, but the behavior, sadly, remains the same (they call it “ethnic cleansing” now).

“Crimes against humanity” are still perpetrated every day-so why haven’t we had any more Nurembergs? If it can’t be caught via cell phone camera and posted five minutes later on YouTube like Saddam Hussein’s execution, so we can take a quick peek, go “Yay! Justice is served!” and then get back to our busy schedule of eating stuffed-crust pizza and watching the Superbowl, I guess we just can’t be bothered. Besides, who wants to follow some boring 11-month long trial, anyway (unless, of course, an ex-football player is involved).

Or maybe it’s just that the perpetrators have become savvier since 1945; many of those who commit crimes against humanity these days wear nice suits and have corporate expense accounts, nu? Or maybe it’s too hard to tell who the (figurative) Nazis are today, because in the current political climate, everyone and anyone, at some point, is destined to be compared to one. Maybe we all need to watch this film together and get a reality check.

Conspiracy a-go-go, Historical drama, On Politics

Days of future past: The Conspirator **1/2

August 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 23, 2011)

War does not determine who is right…only who is left.

-Bertrand Russell

Who was it that originally quipped “There was nothing ‘civil’ about it” in reference to the American Civil War? Truer words have seldom been spoken in reference to that ugly chapter of U.S. history that left 600,000 corpses in its wake. The scars still run deep; witness the controversies stirred up by some of the recent commemorative events related to noting the 2011 Civil War Sesquicentennial.

By the spring of 1865, after four horrifying years, it was all over but the shooting, as far as the war itself was concerned, but the psychic wounds were fresh. And, as we’ve all known since elementary school, it was in this climate of fear and loathing that, on the night of April 14^th (with the ink barely dry on Lee’s official surrender at Appomattox), President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated while attending a play with his wife at the Ford Theater in Washington D.C. by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth.

What many Americans are not as cognizant of is that Booth was but one of the players in a conspiracy to kill not only Lincoln, but VP Johnson and Secretary of State Seward. In essence, it was an attempt to take down the federal government in one fell swoop (Seward, bedridden at the time, was stabbed at his home, but survived, and the VP’s would-be killer lost his nerve).

Out of the eight accused co-conspirators who stood trial before a specially appointed government commission (official-speak for “military tribunal”), the most enigmatic figure was D.C. boarding house proprietress Mary Surratt, who holds the dubious distinction as the first woman ever executed by the United States. Her story has been dramatized in Robert Redford’s The Conspirator, which is the first feature film produced by his American Film Company.

In a sepia-toned opening scene recreating the look of a Matthew Brady photo, we meet Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy) a Union soldier lying wounded among the dead and dying. After his discharge from military service, he goes into law practice, and his first major case is a doozy. He is asked by his mentor, Senator Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) to defend Mary Surratt (Robin Wright).

While her son John, who had managed to flee the U.S. and eluded authorities until well after his mother’s trial and execution, appeared to be more directly involved, a combination of circumstantial proximity (the conspirators held numerous meetings at her boarding house) and less-than-flattering press (President Andrew Johnson publicly stated that she “…kept the nest that hatched the egg”) assured that her attorney had a tough row to hoe. As portrayed in the film, Surratt retains an air of almost serene inscrutability throughout the trial. Wright embodies this dichotomy quite well.

After choking back his initial abhorrence at the very idea of defending Surratt, Aiken’s formidable challenge is how to build a strong defense under the restrictions imposed by military tribunal procedure (there is no entitlement to a jury of your peers, for starters). The man charged with assembling the tribunal wasn’t much help; Secretary of War Edwin Stanton did everything in his power to push for an expedient trial and executions. Kevin Kline gives an interesting performance as Stanton; I could swear that he’s consciously channeling Dick Cheney’s voice and mannerisms.

And the parallels don’t stop there. Although Redford has been playing dumb in the several recent TV interviews I saw, denying any analogical intentions, it’s inevitable that any halfway historically astute viewer is going to notice the pointed similarities brought to the fore in James Solomon’s script between the dramatic shift in the nation’s sociopolitical climate post-Lincoln assassination in 1865 and post-9/11 in 2001 (Bob Redford ain’t dumb, nor is he apolitical).

Most of these didactic are telegraphed in the exchanges between McAvoy and Kline. Stanton tells Aiken at one point, “Someone must be held accountable. The People want that.” To which Aiken replies, “It’s not justice you’re after; it’s revenge.” Operation Iraqi Freedom, anyone? Several of their conversations hammer home the reminder (and it’s a good one) that, no matter how grave the “national crisis” may be, the basic constitutionally-assured civil rights of American citizens do not come with a factory-equipped “on/off” switch.

One interesting parallel arose just this week, when it was announced that Wikileaks suspect Bradley Manning (still awaiting trial) was transferred from solitary confinement at the brig at Quantico to a medium-security facility at Leavenworth. In the film, Aiken appeals (successfully) to the tribunal that Surratt be transferred from the draconian Old Capitol Prison (where she was never allowed outside) to another facility, where she was permitted outside to take fresh air and exercise (the other accused co-conspirators were initially kept below decks on two ironclads anchored in the Potomac River).

McAvoy and Wright have great chemistry. Evan Rachel Wood makes the most of her brief turn as Surratt’s daughter; she’s a wonderfully intuitive actress. While I wouldn’t place this film in the same echelon as a Breaker Morant, Redford has made something that will please history buffs, yet be eminently watchable to others. I will admit that his tendency to take an austere approach in his film making has left me cold on many occasions. But Redford’s hand is assured; his art comes from a thoughtful and intelligent place. And sadly, that has become the exception to the rule in modern American cinema.

Eco-doc, On Politics

Crisis? What crisis? – Carbon Nation ***

August 3, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on March 12, 2011)

Remember those math story problems in elementary school? Good times. Anyway, here’s a fun one for you: Mankind’s daily energy use is 16 terawatts a day. Currently, an estimated 2 of those terawatts are derived from “green” sources. That means that the remaining 14 terawatts rely on traditional fossil fuels. Now, if the Sun alone (to name but one available form of “free” alternative energy) is bombarding the Earth with a potential tap of 86,000 terawatts a day, WTF IS WRONG WITH MANKIND? Oh-did you remember to carry the global warming deniers? Good! Now, you may put down your No. 2 pencils and pass your papers to the front of the class.

It’s a simple question, really. And it frames the premise of an eco-doc from director Peter Byck, called Carbon Nation. In all fairness, that little dig at the global warming deniers was my embellishment; the film’s tag line actually promises “a climate change solutions movie that doesn’t even care if you believe in climate change”. This is either good news or bad news, depending on what you generally look for in an eco-doc.

If you are looking to have your worst fears confirmed about how screwed the planet might be (An Inconvenient Truth, The 11^th Hour) or a “catch ‘em with their pants down” muckraker about the fossil fuels industry, like GasLand-then you may be frustrated by Byck’s non-partisan approach. However, if you already “get” the part about the sky falling, yet are looking for some positive news on the “solutions” front, this film could be an inspiration.

Byck traverses America, profiling people who are striving to make a difference in lightening our carbon footprint. People like Cliff Etherege, a West Texas cotton farmer who talked a number of his neighbors into pooling their relatively small 500-acre farms together into forming an operation called Peak Wind, which is now (collectively) one of the largest wind farms in the world. The formation of the company literally saved the town of Roscoe, which had been slowly dying for a number of years.

There is Alaskan entrepreneur Bernie Karl (who I had the pleasure of meeting through my Fairbanks radio gig many moons ago). Karl is the owner of the Chena Hot Springs Resort, a popular tourist destination about 60 miles north of Fairbanks. He has devised a machine that generates geothermal power from a water temperature of 165 degrees. 95% of the liquid drilled from the ground by most oil wells is water, which averages a temperature of…165 degrees. In an ideal universe, each of those wells would have one of Bernie’s converters on hand-which would create a power output equivalent to 10 nuclear plants. Oil companies currently view the water simply as waste-but we can dream, right?

One of the more admirable folks profiled is Van Jones, the civil rights advocate who has become a green jobs organizer. He was a key advocate for the Green Jobs Act (signed into law back in 2007). Armed with an uplifting catchphrase (“Green jobs, not jails”) Jones is shown spreading his message through economically challenged urban communities like Richmond, California, where disadvantaged youths have found steady employment installing solar panels on neighborhood homes through one of his programs. It’s quite inspirational to see that someone has figured a way to mesh the idea of sustaining a green economy with making a positive social impact.

Byck also touches base with “Green Hawks” who are working with the Department of Defense to make overseas military support operations more energy efficient via wind and solar power. One of them, ex-CIA head R. James Woolsey, delivers the film’s money quote. In consideration of the “blood and treasure” sacrifices that we suffer as a result of our dependence on fossil fuels, he observes, “President (George Herbert Walker) Bush probably would not have felt like he had to protect Saudi Arabia from Iraq, if the Persian Gulf had been home to 2/3 of the world’s proven supply of broccoli.”

Woolsey’s comment is the closest that the film comes to being polemical; as I stated at the top of the review, Byck has made a concerted effort to just accentuate the positive. Which is all well and good (who can’t use an uplift and a little inspiration now and then?), but in a way it’s a bit of a shame, particularly with the timing of the film’s release (have any change left after filling your tank recently?).

With all the eco-docs that have dealt with the global warming/fossil fuels dependency issues, I’ve yet to see one that acknowledges and addresses the elephant in the room: Despite the fact that this is one issue that should transcend politics, it has been co-opted as a political football, and we need to get away from that (at least if we ever hope to see more planet-friendly legislation).

During my morning commute the other day I was listening to “Democracy Now” and heard Amy Goodman interviewing Naomi Klein, who is working on a new book about climate change and the climate change deniers. I thought Klein offered some thoughtful observations on why most of the deniers come from the Right:

But something very different is going on on the right, and I think we need to understand what that is. Why is climate change seen as such a threat? I don’t believe it’s an unreasonable fear. I think it is—it’s unreasonable to believe that scientists are making up the science. They’re not. It’s not a hoax. But actually, climate change really is a profound threat to a great many things that right-wing ideologues believe in. So, in fact, if you really wrestle with the implications of the science and what real climate action would mean, here’s just a few examples what it would mean.

Well, it would mean upending the whole free trade agenda, because it would mean that we would have to localize our economies, because we have the most energy-inefficient trade system that you could imagine. And this is the legacy of the free trade era. So, this has been a signature policy of the right, pushing globalization and free trade. That would have to be reversed.

You would have to deal with inequality. You would have to redistribute wealth, because this is a crisis that was created in the North, and the effects are being felt in the South. So, on the most basic, basic, “you broke it, you bought it,” polluter pays, you would have to redistribute wealth, which is also against their ideology.

You would have to regulate corporations. You simply would have to. I mean, any serious climate action has to intervene in the economy. You would have to subsidize renewable energy, which also breaks their worldview.

You would have to have a really strong United Nations, because individual countries can’t do this alone. You absolutely have to have a strong international architecture.

So when you go through this, you see, it challenges everything that they believe in. So they’re choosing to disbelieve it, because it’s easier to deny the science than to say, “OK, I accept that my whole worldview is going to fall apart,” that we have to have massive investments in public infrastructure, that we have to reverse free trade deals, that we have to have huge transfers of wealth from the North to the South. Imagine actually contending with that. It’s a lot easier to deny it.

Klein did go on to say that a lot of the major green groups are in a “kind of denial” as well; in that they don’t want to confront the fact that it this a political and economic issue. Getting back to Byck’s film, many of the people and companies he profiles are, in fact, proving that sustainability can be both an earth-friendly and economically sound proposition. So what’s stopping everybody from getting together on the same page? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Don’t make me turn this into another math story problem…

Conspiracy a-go-go, Drama, On Politics

Ambition’s debt is paid: The Ides of March **1/2

August 2, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on October 8, 2011)

In the decidedly theatrical opener of George Clooney’s latest directorial effort, The Ides of March, a well-attired young man with a lean and hungry look emerges from backstage shadows, steps up to a podium and begins to address an empty hall. After muttering some standard-issue mike check gibberish, he begins to recite snippets of what sounds like some tried-and-true, audience-rousing political campaign rhetoric.

His tone becomes so assured and impassioned, you find yourself wondering if he is the one running for office. He’s not, actually. But he is playing to win. He’s a hotshot campaign advisor named Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling), a Ninja spin doctor (or, “Spinja” if you like) who also possesses something relatively rare in the cynical and duplicitous profession he has chosen to work in. He actually believes in the candidate he is working to put into office.

That candidate is Governor Mike Morris (Clooney), making a first-time bid for the presidency. The charismatic and straight-talking Morris is in a fierce fight to win the Ohio primary, which should cinch him as the Dem’s nominee. Stephen isn’t the only weapon in his arsenal; his campaign manager is Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) a seasoned veteran with an impressive track record. In the pecking order, Stephen answers to Paul. The one thing that Paul values above all is loyalty, and he makes no bones about it.

That is why Stephen is torn when approached by Paul’s competition, Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti) who manages the rival campaign. After the obligatory “You should be working for the winning team, kid” pitch, Tom gives Stephen a “hot tip” that his camp has been assured a key endorsement from a senator (Jeffrey Wright) which will give Tom’s guy the win. Why is he telling Stephen this? Is it a trick? Then again, it’s nice to be wooed. In the meantime, Stephen does some wooing of his own, with an intern (Evan Rachael Wood). You would think that this sharp young man would know the pitfalls of office romance. This leads a huge pitfall…one that could sink the campaign.

I suppose that is the message of this film (politics is all awash in the wooing). The art of seduction and the art of politicking are one and the same; not exactly a new revelation (a narrative that goes back at least as far as, I don’t know, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar). The politician is seduced by power. However, the politician first must seduce the voter. A pleasing narrative is spun and polished, promises are made, sweet nothings whispered in the ear, and the voter caves.

But once your candidate is ensconced in their shiny new office, well…about that diamond ring? It turns out to be cubic zirconium. Then it’s all about the complacency, the lying, the psychodramas, and the traumas. While a lot of folks do end up getting ‘screwed’, it is not necessarily in the most desirable and fun way. But I digress.

If you would indulge me my prurient analogy a wee bit more, Clooney’s film, while competently made and well-acted, could have used a little Viagra (or something). The TV ad campaign spins it as a political thriller, but while it involves politics, and does feature some intrigue, it’s not really that thrilling. I would classify as more of a political potboiler, simmering on medium high all of the way through.

The screenplay is by-the-numbers (Clooney co-adapted from Beau Willimon’s play, Farragut North with Willimon and Grant Heslov). Clooney is believable as presidential material (duh), Gosling continues to impress with his chameleon skills, and there are fine moments with Marisa Tomei (as well as Hoffman and Giamatti), but if you assemble this much potentially explosive talent, don’t just give ‘em caps and a hammer to play with. That’s free campaign advice.

60's Counterculture, Conspiracy a-go-go, Documentary, On Politics

Swede sweetback’s baadassss song: The Black Power Mixtape ***

August 2, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on October 1, 2011)

Diana: Hi, I’m Diana Christensen, a racist lackey of the imperialist ruling circles.

Laureen: I’m Laureen Hobbs, a badass commie n****r.

Diana: Sounds like the basis of a firm friendship.

–from Network, written by Paddy Chayefsky

The slyly subversive sociopolitical subtext of that memorable exchange between Faye Dunaway and Marlene Warfield in Sidney Lumet’s classic 1976 satire could be lost on anyone not old enough to recall the radical politics and revolutionary rhetoric of the era, but for those of us who are (and who do), the character of “Laureen Hobbs” was clearly inspired by Angela Davis, the UCLA professor-turned activist whose name became synonymous with the Black Power movement of the late 60s to mid 70s.

Screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky’s distillation of the two characters into winking cultural stereotypes, while wryly satirical, was not far off the mark as to how the MSM spun the image of Davis and other prominent figures like Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seale. As I recall, the media tended to focus on the more extreme, sensationalist facets. Police shootouts with Black Panthers, prison riots and U.S. athletes giving the Black Power salute at the Olympic Games made for good copy, but didn’t paint the entire picture of the Black Experience in America.

With the alternative press (and most likely the FBI) excepted, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of investigative parsing going on at the time to unearth the root cause and/or ideology behind the images of violence and civil unrest that the MSM played on a continuous loop. After all, this was, at its core, a legitimate and historically significant American political movement (if not a revolution), and no one seemed to be taking the pains to document it. At least, no one in this country. Sweden, on the other hand? They had it covered.

I know…Sweden. Go figure. At any rate, a treasure trove of vintage 16mm footage, representing nearly a decade of candid interviews with movement leaders and meticulous documentation of Black Panther Party activities and African-American inner city life was recently discovered tucked away in the basement of Swedish Television. Director Goran Olsson has cherry-picked fascinating clips and assembled them in a chronological historical order for his documentary, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Olsson leaves the contextualization to present-day retrospection from surviving participants (Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Kathleen Cleaver and Harry Belafonte), as well as reflections by contemporary African-American academics, writers, poets and musicians. The director restricts modern commentators to voice-over, thereby devoting maximum screen time to the pristine archive footage. And if you’re expecting bandolier-wearing, pistol-waving bad-ass commie, uh, interviewees spouting fiery Marxist-tinged rhetoric, dispense with that hoary stereotype now.

What you will see is a relaxed and soft-spoken Stokely Carmichael, surprising his interviewers by borrowing the mike to ask his own mother questions about her life experience as an African-American woman in America. There are interviews with a jailed Angela Davis, an exiled Eldridge Cleaver (in Algiers), Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton and others; and what really comes through is the humanity behind the rhetoric. Whether one agrees or disagrees with all the means and methods they utilized to get their views across to the powers-that-be, the underlying message is self-empowerment, and a forward-thinking commitment to changing the world for the better.

Speaking of the “powers-that-be”, there are interesting segments on the state response to the movement at the time (infiltration and entrapment, turning a blind eye to civil liberties, etc.) that beg comparisons to our post 9-11 environment (plus ca change…). In fact, the subject of Olsson’s film feels trapped by its 100 minute time constraint; there’s more than enough angles to this largely neglected part of 20th-century American history to provide ample material for a Ken Burns-length miniseries. Olsson weaves social context into the mix by using clips from a 1973 Swedish TV cinema-verite documentary called Harlem: Voices, Faces, a time capsule that lends a sense of poetry to an otherwise straightforward collage

The film is not without flaws; some of the contemporary commentators don’t necessarily lend new insight. Also, Olssons’s commitment to offering viewers a “mix, not a remix” feels unfocused at times (“subjective” doesn’t have to mean “dry”). Still, a film like this is important, because the time is ripe to re-examine the story of the Black Power movement, which despite its failures and flaws, still emerges as one of the last truly progressive grass roots political awakenings that we’ve had in this country (no, the Tea Party shares no parallels, by any stretch of the imagination).

Watching the film made me a little sad. Where is the real passion (and social compassion) in American politics anymore? It’s become all about petty partisanship and myopic self-interest and next to nothing about empowering citizens and maintaining a truly free and equal society. However (to end on an up note), I came across this rousing speech, recently delivered on the 40^th anniversary of the Attica prison riot. It gave me hope that the legacy is alive:

Amen, brother.

Conspiracy a-go-go, Eco-doc, On Politics, The Environment

A (not so) clear-cut case: If a Tree Falls ***

August 1, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 23, 2011)

In the mid-90s, I worked at a Honeybaked Ham store in the Seattle area (don’t ask). Normally, I wouldn’t bring that up, but…funny story. Well, not “ha-ha” funny, but it does tie in with this week’s review.

Because you see, that was when I had my personal brush with “eco-terrorism”. I came to work one day, and espied a couple of Redmond’s finest standing outside the store, talking to the manager. Then I noticed interesting new artwork adorning the windows, writ large in dried ketchup and barbecue sauce: MEAT IS MURDER! It was signed “E.L.F.”. Apparently, several other restaurants down the street had also been hit (McDonald’s had had their locks glued shut).

So, as I was scrubbing to remove the graffiti, I wondered “Who is this ‘ELF’ …a disgruntled Keebler employee?” I had never heard of the Earth Liberation Front. I remember the manager saying “How much you want to bet this guy fled the scene in leather Nikes?” “Yeah,” I snickered, whilst contemplating the dried globs of Heinz 57 on my sponge “these suburban anarchists aren’t exactly the Baader-Meinhof Gang, are they?” (I can’t say that I felt “terrorized”).

Flash forward to 2001. I turned on the local news one night, and saw the UW Center for Urban Horticulture engulfed in flames ($7 million in damage). The arson was attributed to the E.L.F. “Hmm,” I pondered, “maybe they are sort of like the Baader-Meinhof Gang, ”

Or are they? According to the FBI, “Eco-terrorism” is defined as:

The use (or threatened use) of violence of a criminal nature against people or property by an environmentally oriented, sub-national group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature.

That certainly covers a lot of ground. One could argue that Johnny Appleseed was an Eco-terrorist. Sure, he’s a legendary conservationist and agrarian icon. However, he was against grafting, which resulted in a fruit more suitable for hard cider than for eating. Hence, the “environmentally-oriented” Appleseed was “responsible” for introducing alcohol to the frontier. And it’s inarguable that much “violence of a criminal nature against people or property” is committed under the influence. OK, that’s a stretch .

Then again, there are a number of “environmentally-oriented” types doing a “a stretch” in the federal pen right now for non-lethal actions that the government considers terrorism, and that others consider heroic. This is not a black and white issue; a point not lost on the directors of If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.

So what type of circumstance can change a nature lover into a freedom fighter? Anyone can make a statement by holding up a sign or throwing on a “Save the Rainforest” t-shirt, but what motivates someone who decides to take it to the next level-throwing on a Ninja outfit and torching a lumber mill in the middle of the night? And what would they hope to achieve? Wouldn’t that just encourage corporations to cut down even more trees to replace lost inventory?

In order to convey a sense of the humanity behind the mug shots, co-directors Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman focus primarily on Earth Liberation Front member Daniel McGowan, who at the time of filming was facing a possible life sentence for his direct involvement in several high-profile “actions” (including the arson of an Oregon lumber mill) that resulted in millions of dollars in property damage. Holed up in his sister’s NYC apartment (and sporting a house arrest anklet for the first third of the film), McGowan candidly opens up about his life and what led him to change his own M.O. for making a statement from “environmental activism” to “domestic terrorism”.

The filmmakers parallel the timeline and details of McGowan’s personal journey with a study about the development of the E.L.F., adding present day interviews with his cohorts and archival footage of some of the group’s early “actions” (which were more in the realm of civil disobedience and passive resistance-like sitting in the path of bulldozers and camping out in old-growth trees marked for cutting). McGowan initially became involved with the environmental movement through “mainstream” activities, like “writing hundreds of letters” of protest and participating in peaceful demonstrations.

McGowan became frustrated with what he perceived to be the ineffectiveness of such actions. He sums it up with a rhetorical question: “When you’re screaming at the top of your lungs, and nobody hears you, what are you supposed to do?”

The tipping point for McGowan came in 1999, when he participated in the WTO protests in Seattle. There, through some of the more radicalized E.L.F. members, he became embedded with the relatively small band of black-clad “anarchists” who were disproportionately responsible for most of the property damage that occurred during the demonstrations (the majority of participants made a point after the fact to disassociate themselves from the anarchists).

From there, it was a relatively small jump to the more extreme acts that would lead to his eventual arrest and prosecution (he agreed to a “non-cooperation” plea deal that saved him from life in prison but still saddled him with 7 years and a “terrorism enhancement”).

The filmmakers give equal screen time to some of the law enforcement officials and prosecutors who made the case against McGowan and his associates. Although no one was ever injured or killed as a result of E.L.F. activity (astounding considering that there were approximately 1,200 “actions” perpetrated by the group during their heyday), there are still victims; and some of them appear on camera as well to offer their perspective.

Were these people “terrorists”? You almost have to get back to defining “what is a terrorist?” Or in this case, who are the real terrorists? One interviewee offers this: “95% of the native American forests have been cut down. Trying to save the remaining 5% is ‘radical’?” That’s a valid question. McGowan himself seems to be arguing (in so many words) that in a post 9-11 world, people have a tendency to make a “rush to judgment” without considering the alternate point of view (he suggests that the word “terrorist” has supplanted “Communist” as the demagogue’s dog whistle of choice).

I wonder if the filmmakers intend McGowan’s story to be a litmus test for the viewer (how far out on the limb would you be willing to go for your personal convictions?) If so, that’s a tough one. Part of me identifies with Daniel McGowan the environmentally-conscious idealist; but I don’t think I can quite get behind Daniel McGowan the criminal arsonist. For now, I’m just content to keep recycling and doing my part to think “glocal”. And in case you’re wondering…I haven’t stepped foot inside a Honeybaked Ham store since I quit working there 14 years ago. Those murderous bastards.

Armageddon, Drama, On Politics, Thriller

Ah-CHOO! Oh, crap: Contagion ***1/2

July 30, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on September 17, 2011)

So you say you don’t have enough nightmarish fodder for those racing thoughts that keep you tossing and turning on sweat-soaked sheets every night…what with the economy, the Teabaggers, the pending demise of entitlement programs, the Teabaggers, the rising costs of healthcare, and the Teabaggers? Are you prone to health anxiety? Do you spend hours on wrongdiagnosis.com in a dogged search to confirm your worst fears that your hangnail is surely a symptom of some horrible wasting disease? And there’s no way in hell I can convince you the glass is half-full, not half-empty?

Bubbeleh, have I got a movie for you.

Steven Soderbergh has taken the network narrative formula that drove Traffic, his 2000 Oscar winner about the ‘war’ on drugs, and used it to similar effect in Contagion, a cautionary tale envisioning socio-political upheaval in the wake of a killer pandemic (which epidemiological experts concur is not a matter of “if”, but of “when”).

In an opening montage (entitled “Day 2”), the camera tails the person we assume to be Patient Zero, an American businesswoman (Gwyneth Paltrow) returning from an overseas trip, as she kills time at a Chicago airport lounge. She appears to be developing a slight cold. Soderbergh’s camera begins to focus on benign items. A dish of peanuts. A door knob. Paltrow’s hand as she pays her tab. A creeping sense of dread arises. The scenario becomes more troubling when Soderbergh ominously cuts to a succession of individuals in Hong Kong, Tokyo and London who have all suddenly taken extremely ill.

Whatever they have, it works fast. By the time Paltrow is reunited with her kids and her husband (Matt Damon, as the Everyman of the piece), we’ve watched several of the overseas victims collapse and die horribly; in the meantime her sniffles and sore throat escalates to fever, weakness and ultimately a grand mal seizure. Within moments of her arrival at the ER, it’s Mystery Virus 1, Doctors 0. It’s only the beginning of the nightmare. An exponential increase in deaths quickly catches the attention of the authorities, which in turn saddles us with a bevy of new characters to keep track of.

There are the CDC investigators in the U.S. (Kate Winslet is in the field, while her boss Laurence Fishburne holds meddlesome politicos at bay) and Marion Cotillard as a doctor enlisted by the W.H.O. to look into Hong Kong as possible ground zero. There are the front line researchers doing the lab work to isolate the virus and develop a vaccine (Jennifer Ehle, Demetri Martin and Elliott Gould).

Even Homeland Security gets into the act; Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston is a liaison who suggests possible terrorist scenarios (could this be a “weaponized” virus?). Jude Law portrays a popular activist blogger who claims there is an existing vaccine that works, but that the CDC is withholding distribution for nefarious reasons (something to do with Big Pharma; certainly feasible). Law is also the recipient of a zinger print journalists will be falling over each other to quote : “A blog isn’t writing. It’s graffiti with punctuation.”

There are many threads to keep track of; fortunately, Soderbergh brings all the ingredients to a gently rolling boil by the film’s denouement without overcooking the ham, as it were. By reining in his powerhouse cast, and working from a screenplay (by Scott Z. Burns) that eschews melodrama, Soderbergh keeps it real (if a tad clinical), resulting in an effective and thought-provoking ensemble piece (by contrast, Wolfgang Peterson’s star-studded, similarly-themed 1995 thriller Outbreak plays more like a live action cartoon).

In fact, I can’t help but wonder how many of the folks who flocked to theaters last weekend (and helped make Contagion #1 at the box office ) were disappointed by Soderbergh’s unadorned approach . Historically, Soderbergh tends to deliver either sure-fire populist ‘product’ (Out of Sight, Erin Brokovich, Oceans 11 and its sequels), or obscure experiments aimed squarely at the art house hipster crowd (Schizopolis, Full Frontal, Bubble). On occasion, he finds the sweet spot (Sex, Lies and Videotape, The Limey, Traffic, and now…Contagion).

Conceptually, Contagion is actually a closer cousin to The War Game, the 1965 film from director Peter Watkins that depicted, in a very stark and realistic manner, what might happen in a ‘typical’ medium-sized British city immediately following a nuclear strike. While the root cause of the respective civic crises in the two films differs, the resulting impact on the everyday populace is quite similar, and serves as a grim reminder that no matter how “civilized” we fancy ourselves to be, we are but one such catastrophic event away from complete societal breakdown.

Soderbergh’s film raises interesting questions, like, are we prepared for an event like this? If the virus is a new strain, how long would it take to develop a vaccine? How much longer to manufacture 300 million doses? Surely, not in time to save millions of lives. And speaking of piles of corpses, how do you dispose of them, with one eye on public safety? Who’s first in line to receive the first batch of vaccine? Who decides? And, outside of Soderbergh’s narrative), the CDC isn’t one of those government agencies currently targeted for budget cuts by our Republican and Teabagger buds in Congress…is it? I wish I could reassure fellow hypochondriacs with “It’s only a movie.” But the best I can do for now is: A gezunt Dir in Pupik!

Conspiracy a-go-go, On Politics, War(s) on Terror

Let them eat yellow cake: Fair Game ***

July 16, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 6, 2010)

I would like to invite you along for a little stroll down memory lane…to a time, not so long ago, when we had this man in the White House who, well…went a little ‘funny’ in the head after a terrorist group attacked America. You know, funny, and what he did was, you see, he sort of…girded his loins to invade a Middle Eastern country that actually had very little to do with the specific group of terrorists who attacked America.

Naturally, he first had to come up with a viable reason . And what he did was, he convinced the Congress that the country in question was not only chockablock with evildoers, but evildoers who had weapons of mass destruction that surely would be wielded against America in the near future.

Now, he couldn’t actually produce any photos of these Doomsday Machines, but they did discover some suspicious aluminum tubes. Oh-and they heard it from a friend who, heard it from a friend who, heard it from another that they had been messin’ around with a substance called “yellow cake” which can be used in the manufacture of WMDs. Again, no real evidence, but nobody in the Congress wanted to be labeled as unpatriotic or anything like that, so they all went “Booyah! Shock and awe!” and opened those bomb bay doors wide.

So, the invasion was going swimmingly for a spell, and even those Americans who may have been scratching their heads over the aluminum tubes and yellow cake and such were keeping mum, because they didn’t want to be labeled as unpatriotic, either.Besides, all the journalists on the TV were supporting the troops, too!

But then, as the war began to drag on, and no stockpiles of WMDs seemed to be turning up, sleeper cells of not-so-patriotic grumblers could be detected all around America. However, as they turned out to be mostly aging, drug-addled old left-leaning hippie panhandlers and radical progressive pundits, the White House didn’t pay much mind to such gibberish-that is, until the summer of 2003.

That is when a former Foreign Service officer and ambassador named Joe Wilson published an op-ed in The New York Times called “What I Didn’t Find in Africa”. Wilson had been sent on a fact-finding trip to Niger in 2002 at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney, to investigate a report that Iraq had purchased some of the aforementioned yellow cake back in the late 1990s.

The gist of the piece was that there seemed to be a credibility gap between what the guy in the White House (you know, the one who went, sort of ’funny’ in the head) was claiming regarding the alleged stockpiling of yellow cake in Iraq, and what Wilson had actually discovered. ‘Someone’ obviously lied.

And it wasn’t Mr. Wilson.

That’s why ‘someone’ involved with the White House became very cross with Wilson. As a result, ‘someone’ accidentally-on-purpose allowed some confidential information about Wilson’s wife to get leaked.

In fact, it was only 8 days after Wilson’s op-ed appeared that conservative journalist Robert Novak published an article in which he identified Valerie Plame Wilson as an “agency operative” (as in CIA). The Wilson’s life became hell, and the question of whether or not ‘someone’ in the Bush administration was guilty of a criminal act (by outing a CIA operative) became a widely debated issue.

Eventually, following a Department of Justice investigation, a member of the administration, Lewis “Scooter” Libby (former chief of staff for VP Cheney) ended up taking the fall in 2007, when he received a 30-month sentence for perjury and obstruction The President (apparently still feeling a little ‘funny’) commuted Libby’s sentence, 4 months after the conviction.

You’ll note that I said Libby “took the fall”. I don’t want to name names, or put on a tin foil hat and suggest that there was a powerful cabal behind the smear, but in 2007, the Wilsons did file a civil suit against Messrs. Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Richard Armitage (it didn’t take). Ah-(*sigh*) those were the days.

Indeed, many “Kodak moments” from the BushCo era came flashing back as I watched Fair Game, Doug Liman’s slightly uneven dramatization of the “Plame affair”. Jez and John-Henry Butterworth based their screenplay on two memoirs, The Politics of Truth by Joe Wilson, and Fair Game by Valerie Plame.

Sean Penn and Naomi Watts bring their star power to the table as the Wilsons, portraying them as a loving couple who were living relatively low key lives (she more as a necessity of her profession) until they got pushed into a boiling cauldron of nasty political intrigue that falls somewhere in between All the President’s Men and Three Days of the Condor.

Viewers unfamiliar with the back story could be misled by the opening scenes, which give the impression you may be in for a Bourne-style action thriller. The conundrum is that the part of the story concerning Valerie Plame’s CIA exploits can at best be speculative in nature. Due to the sensitivity of those matters, Plame has only gone on record concerning that part of her life in vague, generalized terms, so what you end up with is something along the lines of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

However, the most important part of the couple’s story was the political fallout that transpired once Valerie was “outed” by Novak. Although Valerie (the more guarded of the two) is initially reticent to go on the counteroffensive, Joe is able to convince her that there is much more at stake than merely salvaging their pride by pushing back.

Liman wisely shifts the focus to depicting how Wilson and Plame weathered this storm together, and ultimately stood up to the Bush-Cheney juggernaut of “alternative facts” that helped sell the American public on Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The CIA, of course was no help; they dropped Plame like a hot potato once her cover was blown (essentially throwing her under the bus while wishing her best of luck).

In light of this past Tuesday’s depressing results, the timing of this film’s release could be seen as serendipity. We know from experience how ugly it’s going to get, and also learned that a bully is a bully until you push back. So why not take a bit of inspiration away from this political David and Goliath tale from our not-so-distant past? We’d best get in shape now. So…drop and give me 20!

Big Money, Documentary, On Politics, Up the Workers

The (toxic) loan arranger rides again: Inside Job ***1/2

July 16, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 6, 2010)

Rising up to break this thing

From family trees the dukes do swing

Just one blow to scratch the itch

The law’s made for and by the rich

–Paul Weller

I have good news and bad news about the documentary, Inside Job, Charles Ferguson’s incisive parsing of what led to the crash of the global financial system in 2008. The good news is that I believe I finally grok what “derivatives” and “toxic loans” are. The bad news is…that doesn’t make me feel any better about how fucked we are.

To their credit, writers Chad Beck and Adam Bolt don’t stoop to hyperbole (pandering to those steadily depressing, low down mind-messing, workin’ at the car wash blues that we’re already feeling as a result of this economic nightmare) but step back to give some actual historical perspective. The filmmakers start at the very beginning-all the way back to where the seeds were sown-during the spate of rampant financial deregulation during the Reagan administration (aka, “morning in America”-remember that?).

No POTUS (including Obama) who has led the country post-Reagan is let off the hook, either. The film illustrates, point by painful point, how every subsequent administration, Democratic and Republican alike, did their “part” in enabling the current crisis-mostly through political cronyism and legislative manipulation. The result of this decades long circle jerk involving Wall Street, the mortgage industry, Congress, the White House and lobbyists (with Ivy League professors as pivot men) is what we are now living with today.

The film is very slickly produced; it’s well-paced, nicely edited and Matt Damon’s even-toned narration helps to keep the somewhat byzantine threads of the story accessible. Ferguson was able to assemble a fascinating cross-section of talking heads, including financial insiders, economists, politicians, academics…and even a Wall Street madam (who comes off, relative to the kinds of people she provides services for, as one of the more virtuous and forthright interviewees).

In fact, the overall impression I came away with was that the entire financial system, taken along with its associative ties to lobbyists, legislators, economics professors and corporate-backed MSM lackeys, is nothing less than a glorified prostitution ring-funded by America’s working poor and middle class taxpayers.

This brings me to the film’s one flaw. Ferguson is very good at getting us riled up (there’s plenty here to get pissed about)-but doesn’t necessarily offer solutions (maybe some suggestions on how to fire up grassroots activism?). But I suspect that you already figured that out (that it’s up to “us”). Me? I’m kind of slow on this stuff-that’s probably why I just do movie reviews around these parts.