Here we are in a special place
what are you gonna do here?
now we stand in a special place
what will you do here?
What show of soul
are we gonna get from you?
It could be Deliverance
or History
under these skies so blue,
but if I know you, you’ll
bang the drum
like monkeys do.

Now we stand on a rocky shore
your father stood here before you.
I can see his ghost explore you.
I can feel the sea implore you
not to pass on by,
not to walk on by and not to try
- just to let it come
don’t bang the drum
just let it come
don’t bang the drum
do you know how to let it come now?
don’t bang the drum now
just let it come now
don’t bang the drum now
don’t bang the drum

— “Don’t Bang the Drum” by The Waterboys. Words and lyrics by Mike Scott and Karl Wallinger, 1985

from Consolation Champs

A Prayer for the G20 Summit

from Consolation Champs

Iran: Deja Vu All Over Again

From a summary of recommendations in Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation, a 211-page report released in July by the RAND Corporation’s National Defense Research Institute, under a $400,000 contract with the United States Joint Forces Command.

HARNESS THE POWER OF INFLUENCERS: Businesses strive to harness the power of influencers and word of mouth in their marketing efforts. The U.S. military should harness the influencing power of indigenous government employees and security forces by having them blog about their views regarding coalition forces. The military might further consider enhancing the Internet access of indigenous populations via distribution of cheap and durable Wi-Fi-capable laptops and by sponsoring Wi-Fi clouds around U.S. operating bases.

from Consolation Champs

Just Give Them Blogs and WiFi

Lake of Fire (USA, director Tony Kaye): A monumental (152 minutes!) documentary on the abortion issue filmed over a 15-year period, Tony Kaye’s film is likely to become a classic. The film covers all kinds of ground and features interviews with many people on both sides of the issue. Perhaps surprisingly, quite a few of them have intelligent things to say.

There is quite a lot of (and I’d say too much) coverage of the extreme fringe of the pro-life movement, including the string of killings of abortion doctors in the 1990s, and a very strange and possibly insane man who runs an organization called Lambs of Jesus. Too often, the pro-life camp is described as simply an extension of the Christian Right’s agenda. While that may be largely true, there are millions of other people with pro-life views that are much less extreme, who are not necessarily marching or picketing abortion clinics. It would have been nice to hear from some of them. One interesting pro-life advocate was writer Nat Hentoff, a liberal atheist. In the pro-choice camp, there were a few notable voices, including lawyer Alan Dershowitz and Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice. Then there were those who appeared to be in the middle somewhere, including several medical bioethicists and even Noam Chomsky, who was perhaps the most eloquent voice in the film.

I suppose the extensive coverage of the shootings of abortion doctors may have been included to balance the equally disturbing images of abortion procedures, including the doctor “piecing together” the body parts of the fetus after the procedure. Any honest film about abortion needs to address these very real images.

I believe it may have been Chomsky who stated that abortion comes down to a difficult choice between two (and possibly more) competing but authentic values. He also pointed out that if pro-life supporters claim to be concerned about children, there were lots of easy ways to help the many suffering children in the world, but that few were actually doing much about it.

The film concludes with two segments where I found the use of music to be manipulative. One is the statement by a nurse who was severely injured in an abortion clinic bombing, and the final longer segment follows one woman as she goes through the entire abortion procedure, from filling out forms to her sudden breakdown as she tries to tell the interviewer she’s “relieved.” The images and stories were powerful enough without the need for swelling strings in the background. As well, it’s not always clear when each part of the film was shot, or whether we’re seeing things in chronological order at all, and for a film that covers 15 years of a changing political landscape, it would be nice to have a timeline and even some statistics to see how things are changing.

Other than those relatively minor misgivings, this is a landmark film and has set a high standard for feature length documentaries dealing with this relatively neglected subject. The two and a half hours went by very quickly, and I was even left wanting more. Director Kaye says he has lots more and could even make the material into a television series. I for one would be interested.

(8.5/10) – my graphic doesn’t show half-points

from Consolation Champs

Lake of Fire

Offside (Iran, director Jafar Panahi): Filmed during an actual qualifying match for the 2006 World Cup, Offside works brilliantly as both a comedy and a tragedy. The film follows the fortunes of a group of young women who are caught trying to sneak into a football match at Tehran’s Azadi Stadium. The country’s Islamic religious leaders have decreed that women may not sit with men at sporting events, lest they be exposed to cursing and other morally questionable behaviour. This hasn’t stopped the country’s young female fans, who continue to sneak in using various tricks. But Panahi focuses on a small group who have been caught and are being detained agonizingly close to the action. They beg the bored soldiers guarding them to let them go or at least to let them watch the match. The soldiers tell them they shouldn’t have tried to get in, that they could have watched the game at home on TV. They banter back and forth in almost real-time as the game continues, just off-camera.

There is one very funny sequence where a young soldier accompanies one of the girls to the restroom. Since there are no female restrooms at stadiums, he has to clear the room of any men before he can allow her to go in. Plus, he makes her cover her face so no one can see she’s a woman. This is accomplished using a poster of Iranian soccer star Ali Karimi as a mask, with eye holes punched out.

You get a real sense that even the soldiers are baffled by the prohibition, and are only carrying out their orders so as to hasten the end of their compulsory military service. One soldier complains that he was supposed to be on leave so he could take care of his family’s cattle in the countryside. Little by little, the girls and the soldiers talk to each other, and there are numerous small acts of kindness on both sides to show that these are basically good people living in terrible circumstances. However, the soldiers’ constant reminder that “the chief” is on his way lends a sense of menace, since we don’t know what sort of punishment the women will face.

Unlike most Iranian films, which are known for their strong visuals, Offside is filmed in a realist style with no artifice. In fact, the film was made during the actual qualifying match against Bahrain that took place on June 5, 2005. The “plot” in many ways was determined by the result on the pitch. If Iran won the match, they would qualify. If they lost, they would not. Since the World Cup has come and gone, I don’t think it is a spoiler to say that Iran won the match. The scenes of celebration at the end of the film were real and spontaneous, which gave the film a real authenticity. Seeing how much this meant to the people of Iran was deeply touching.

As well, one of the young women makes reference at the end of the film to seven fans who died during the Iran-Japan match on March 25, just a few weeks before. They were trampled to death after police began to spray the crowd with water to move them in a certain direction. Knowing that this was a real-life tragedy added another level of poignancy to the celebrations.

I don’t want to go off on a long political tangent, but this film gave me real hope that there are those in Iran who are hoping for change and working at it. Iran is a nation of young people, and it is only a matter of time before they take the place of their elders in the political sphere. Films like this one show the proud spirit of the Iranian people in spite of their present difficulties, and it’s my sincere hope that there is a brighter future for them.

Interview with director Jafar Panahi

Good review from Sight and Sound magazine

(9/10)

from Consolation Champs

Offside

from Consolation Champs

Inconvenient

from Consolation Champs

Colbert Roasts Bush

The most interesting part of the poll is the downloadable PDF which tracks his ratings all the way back to February 2001. Did you know that the week before 9/11, his approval rating was at a lukewarm 51% and the week after it jumped to 86%? Thousands dead and it gave him a 35% shot in the arm. You wonder if he’s become addicted to crises to help dig himself out of his lacklustre performance.

from Consolation Champs

Bush Disapproval At Record Levels

International illegality, the deliberate repudiation of international law, and torture, gratuitously employed in defiance of the moral intuitions of ordinary people, all show that the Bush Administration has chosen to place itself outside the moral community of modern Western democratic civilization. This is not an unwarranted or outrageous judgment; it logically follows from the evidence. It seems a strange choice to have been made by an American government that more than any other in history identifies itself with righteousness and with Christianity.

In that respect, if one is to invoke religious judgments, I would cite André Malraux’s remarks to the novelist Georges Bernanos, who had returned to France from wartime exile and asked what judgment Malraux made on Europe in 1945. Malraux replied, “With the camps, Satan has visibly reappeared over the world.”

Why aren’t the mainstream media talking this way?

from Consolation Champs

Harper’s On Torture

Patrick Henry College is a Christian college where 85% of the students come from homeschooled environments. It was founded explicitly to produce conservative politicians and other public office holders.

Discussion on Metafilter

from Consolation Champs

Harvard for the Home-Schooled

But leave it to Lloyd Axworthy, one of my favourite “Red” Liberals and a former Minister of Foreign Affairs to lob one back at the Yanks. Lloyd also happens to serve on the international board of directors for Human Rights Watch. I’m baffled as to why he never made a run for the PM‘s job himself. We could have done a lot worse (and often have).

from Consolation Champs

Ax Attacks!

Do you think that’s strange? I think that’s strange.

from Consolation Champs

Weird

Marry An American has a slightly different plan. They’re signing up single Canadians to marry liberal Americans so that they can escape Bush’s America. If I wasn’t already married, I might be willing to help out! That would certainly be bigamy (get it? bigamy, big of me? it’s funny!).

(via ericalucci)

SPOILER: The site is actually satirical and sponsored by Canada’s lefty THIS Magazine, which has a pretty nifty blog.

from Consolation Champs

Marry An American!

(Note: this song was written by a fellow evangelical Christian, proving we’re not as monolithic, or neolithic, as some might think.)

I don’t mean to be vulgar, or seem combative. But seriously, folks. People lining up for six to eight hours to vote? In the world’s most powerful nation? Shameful. How many of those people got fed up and just went home? We’ll never know. No matter what side of the political fence you’re on, the US electoral process is broken and subject to abuse, corruption, and technological failure. But I doubt there’s any political will to fix things. As far as I know, there weren’t excessive waits or ballot shortages in the “nice” parts of town.

from Consolation Champs

Four More Years

from Consolation Champs

Switching

This upcoming US election is perhaps the most important one of my lifetime, and although I live in Canada, don’t think that US politics doesn’t have any effect up here. Up until now, I’ve been sort of pessimistic, but I’m realizing that the race is still pretty much undecided and that “swing” states will make the difference.

Inspired by Anne Lamott’s recent article in Salon, I’ve decided to throw my support behind Mainstreet Moms Oppose Bush, a grassroots organization that’s targetting undecided or undervoting single moms in swing states. This is a huge group whose lives will be directly affected by another four years of George W. Bush’s brand of politics. Although it would be difficult (and probably too late) for me to participate in their letter-writing campaign, I made a donation. I think I’ll be looking for other organizations like this to support in the crucial days ahead.

If you’re a mom (or a dad, or neither) opposed to Bush, take a look at what MMOB are up to. It’s inspiring.

UPDATE: Vote All Your Values is another worthy project. The Progressive Faith Movement is registering people to mobilize young, low-income, and minority voters on Election Day. ProjectVote is registering low-income and minority voters. Please support their efforts if you can.

from Consolation Champs

I’m a Mainstreet Mom!

The scary way that George W. Bush governs by his “gut” or his “instinct” or especially, his “faith”. If you read to the end, you’ll be treated to a good quote from Jim Wallis, founder of the Sojourners faith community and magazine: “Real faith leads us to deeper reflection and not — not ever — to the thing we as humans so very much want. Easy certainty.” (via boingboing)

from Consolation Champs

Governing By The Seat Of Your Pants

Some television viewers have heard another voice speaking Bush’s words before he says them. As well, some photos showing him from behind seem to indicate a squarish bulge that may be a battery pack. Though President Bush has been known to say he sometimes acts on “promptings from God”, I’m not sure if it’s a relief to know that it might just be promptings from his handlers. Creepy, nevertheless, if it turns out to be true. I’m getting an icky image of a hand up his backside and him as a perfect ventriloquist’s dummy. (via boingboing)

10/8/04 UPDATE: Salon has picked up the story.

from Consolation Champs

Voices In My Head

from Consolation Champs

Sloganator Tribute

from Consolation Champs

Sorry, California

from Consolation Champs

Commanding Heights On PBS.org

from Consolation Champs

Crusading Granny?