In his compelling 2008 book X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker, director Alex Cox delivers a powerful insight about modern movie audiences that helps illuminate the bizarre, amnesiac nature of modern political audiences as well. The book as a whole provides a riveting account of the circumstances surrounding the making of ten films shot by the Liverpudlian director, from his film school days at UCLA in the late seventies to his groundbreaking "microfeature," Searchers 2.0, in 2006. One of the films put under the microscope of Cox’s affable, witty but hard-hitting analysis is Three Businessmen, from 1998. A

Just asking … still asking ….   Feliz navidad, y’all.

This sounds like something Mikhail Bulgakov might have written, deep in the sinister phantasmagoria of the Stalinist night. From the Israeli service ynetnews.com: One of the large mental health hospitals in Israel was recently surprised to receive a young, good-looking patient in a psychotic state who was accompanied by a personal security guard, Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Sunday. The doctors, who asked why the woman was accompanied by a guard, were shocked to learn that she was a Mossad agent and that the security guard was not assigned to her in order assure her safety or protect her life, but

While we were all out doing our Christmas shopping, the highest court in the land quietly put the kibosh on a few more of the remaining shards of human liberty. It happened earlier this week, in a discreet ruling that attracted almost no notice and took little time. In fact, our most august defenders of the Constitution did not have to exert themselves in the slightest to eviscerate not merely 220 years of Constitutional jurisprudence but also centuries of agonizing effort to lift civilization a few inches out of the blood-soaked mire that is our common human legacy. They just

In recent days we have all witnessed two vomitous eruptions of moral nullity that would tax the powers of a Voltaire or a Vidal to do them proper justice; they quite o’er-crow the meager gifts of a hack like me. But I will sketch a few observations here nonetheless, if only to add one more small voice to those few who bear witness to the evils perpetrated by our unaccountable leaders. We speak of course of Barack Obama’s Nobel speech and Tony Blair’s recent comments on the Iraq War.  Let’s take the lesser figure first. I. Since leaving office, Tony

The mind boggles. Who ever would have thought, even in their darkest, most paranoid dreams, that the Copenhagen climate change talks would be hijacked by a handful of rich nations seeking to give themselves more power and riches while imposing new burdens and new injustices on the rest of the world? And that amongst this avaricious, duplicitous elite one would find the government of a man who now bears the Nobel laurel for his unstinting dedication to the welfare of all humanity? Yet as unlikely as it may seem – the rich screwing the poor? What next? – that’s exactly

I. News from Baghdad on Tuesday morning, from the New York Times: A series of devastating car bombings rocked Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 121 people and wounding hundreds more, according to preliminary accounts by witnesses, the police and hospital officials…. The attacks were the worst in Iraq since twin suicide bombings destroyed three ministries on Oct. 25, killing at least 155 people. They fit a pattern of spectacular attacks in the capital, followed by weeks of relative calm. In August, two suicide car bombs exploded near the country’s Finance and Foreign Ministries, killing at least 122. After you

“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.” — Henry David Thoreau To me, this quote from Thoreau expresses the only rational, moral and humane stance that a citizen can take toward the vast and brutal machinery of the American imperial state in our time. The crimes of this state are monstrous, and mounting. But what is worse is that these crimes are not aberrations; they are the very essence of the system — they are its goal, its product, its lifeblood. And what

How many tomorrows have they given away? How many compared to yesterday? How many more without any reward? How many more can they afford? — Bob Dylan, “2×2” I. And now it is here. The new “surge” in Afghanistan is underway – the second surge launched by the progressive president in his first year in office. Barack Obama’s speech, and the policies embraced in it, and the sinister implications underlying it, are all abysmally awful. They are a death warrant not only for the thousands of Afghan and Pakistani civilians who will be killed in the intensified conflict, but also

Professor As’ad AbuKhalil, aka The Angry Arab, reports on the remarkably under-reported major story in Switzerland this week: the popular vote to ban minarets in the country. In a piece entitled, "Religious Bigotry in the New York Times" (referring to this story), he writes: What happened in Switzerland is quite significant. Of course, only an ignorant would associate Switzerland with equality and tolerance: just remember — as I always remind my students — that women were only granted the right to vote in 1971. Enough said. But what is quite outrageous is the extent to which US (and Western) media