Sweeny Todd-a cut throat production

To say director Tim Burton’s blood opera Sweeney Todd is a cut-throat production does in no way refer to its production values. It’s meant literally. Sweeney Todd (Johnny Depp), London’s demon barber of Fleet Street is a vengeance movie involving very sharp shaving blades. Sweeney Todd had been unjustly sent to spend fifteen years in a penal colony so that a high ranking judge (who’s in desperate need of some time on Sigmund Freud’s couch), Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), would have access to Todd’s beautiful wife and daughter—to take as his own. Of course that was way back when Sweeny Todd was an innocent boyish looking Benjamin Barker. The short fleeting flashbacks to this past life are airy and sunlit, a stark contrast to the rest of the movie which is gorgeously rendered in dirty layered grays and darkness. This is London configured by Hieronymus Bosch, a true purgatory (though perhaps it s more like Hell). Even Dickens would look aghast at this London. It is dark and foreboding, and you certainly get the impression this is a place where any of the teeming human populace would enjoy nothing more than viewing a gruesome hanging before breakfast. Everyone seems in need of a hot bath.

Though dark, there are moments of humor, some in the songs themselves and in the tart remarks of Todd’s lover and accomplice Mrs Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter, wife of the director), and also in a very funny scene where a rescued young scallywag (sort of an indentured servant boy) is served rum with his meal and tells Mrs Lovett to leave the bottle after she pours him a glass. Speaking of songs, which break out at the slightest opportunity (this is opera after all), if it weren’t for the grisly lyrics in some of them, they would form a refreshing counterpoint to the dark background and grisly goings-on in the barber chair and down below where the bodies pile up. Todd’s first victim is a very ornate (and true opera mannequin) barber Signor Adolfo Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen–aka Borat, aka Ali G). Many more follow.

Once you have the bloodlust of vengeance, so the movie graphically suggests, it is but a short trip to insanity and bloodlust for itself, especially when there is profit in it. Why, after all, waste all those cadavers when Mrs Lovett can fill her meat pies with them, that is, after they’ve been properly ground in a huge grinder (turns out Todd also has a certain mechanical ingenuity). The pies sell like hotcakes, and proves Mrs. Lovett to be a fine businesswoman.

The graphic display of blood-squirting throat cutting is disturbing, a ballet of Todd’s razors. After watching this movie I woke up several times during the night clutching my throat and taking in deep gulps of air. I should also say that this dread was somewhat countered by my strange attraction to Mrs Lovett’s Gothic Emo appearance (not usually my cup of English tea)—immensely dark eyes made even more pronounced by aureoles of more darkness, and then there were those fingerless lace gloves and the low cut wench bodice …but of course I must be careful. I wouldn’t want to make Sweeney Todd jealous.

The screen play is from John Logan, the music from Stephen Soundheim. See synopsis the original musical Sweeney Todd 1973 production here and the basis of this character here.

And of course let’s not forget the real Sweeney Todd. It’s the stuff nightmares are made of.

I Am CGI

I always look forward to movies in the huge digital screen theater in my area, the kind where even a not so great movie at least comes out looking its best. That’s why I especially looked forward to I Am Legend starring Will Smith. I had been treated to the trailer tease for months. Plus, I love survivalist, end-of-the-world movies (Land of the Dead, 28 Weeks Later, Planet Terror, etc).

Scientist Robert Neville (Will Smith), along with his ubiquitous dog companion—a German Shepard named Sam–have bonded well. And that’s a good thing because there aren’t many people left; in fact, Will is the only human in Manhattan (sort of). There are traffic jams but they’re frozen in place, the occupants long since gone. At first, during say the first half hour or so of the movie, it looks like a lot of Omega Man (like in the Charlton Heston version by that name) fun, hunting deer that run in huge herds in between the abandoned cars and buildings, golfing off the horizontal tail wing of the SR-71 Blackbird parked on the deck of the USS Enterprise, looting stores for supplies and even hot-rodding through downtown in a cool red muscle car (gas is free for the pumping).

Of course omega type fun doesn’t exist in a vacuum. That’s why Will carries some formidable weaponry (no, as you’ve probably guessed it’s not just for hunting deer). You can see why he carries it when he enters a dark foreboding building looking for his dog which has barked up a deer inside, which brings you to the creepiest part of the movie (and unfortunately creepiness slowly descends down hill after this). It’s almost as creepy as the scene involving a manikin that Will has named Fred (remember he’s lonely) that suddenly turns up in a different spot from where it had always been before. “How did you get there, Fred?” a very agitated Will suddenly shouts before machine gunning it in half. This doesn’t appease Will’s anxiety all that much and he starts blasting the windows out of a lot of tall buildings. It’s completely understandable, being an omega man can play havoc on one’s nervous system. It would mine. It’s in the dark places of buildings, after all, where the CGI characters live. And they’re not stupid. They are quite capable of playing with Will’s mind by moving a store manikin.

I doubt you could do most movies today without at least some CGI (computer generated imagery). Whether it’s relegated to background as buildings, ships, huge crowds, etc or even in many cases the characters themselves (as in Beowulf). Without it you certainly couldn’t film Manhattan full of grass sticking up from the city’s asphalt, or herds of deer (and a lion or two) scouring for food.Yeah, there’s a lot of CGI background in I Am Legend but it’s most telling in the “zombies” that Will is forced to battle. It’s done well. In fact it’s done too well. The “zombies” aren’t really zombies but infected humans that have become quickly genetically altered, looking a lot like the aliens in Signs, and to think this all started from the side effects of an anti cancer drug. Why make just an eerie genetically altered figure whose suffering from a virus when you can make him not only look slimy and veiny and nearly translucent but also make him jump and bound like Spiderman and have his mouth open triple its normal size and give him some near X-men capabilities. Suddenly as the CGIers come in close proximity to Will and his dog their CGIness takes on a GQS (Gaming Quality Syndrome): Now Will and his dog are suddenly locked in a violent Xbox 360 game.

The story line is fairly simple: Will Smith is a scientist who is working on a vaccine, at least when he’s not hotrodding after herds of deer. He tests his concoctions on rats and cleverly captured CGI characters. At night he draws the extremely heavy duty shutters and sometimes sleeps with his dog and machine gun in the bathtub. Night is when the CGIs, Dracula like, walk about. After Will’s dog becomes infected by a CGI dog he seeks revenge which unfortunately places him in a very precarious position in the dead of night: CGIers now have him trapped in his overturned vehicle. Fortunately for Will he is saved by a beautiful woman named Anna (Alice Braga) who has been driving with her son through Manhattan towards a human survivor colony in Vermont. She must be especially beautiful to Will who after all hasn’t seen a real woman in a long time. The only people he’s seen are on TIVO shows now run on generators. There’s nothing romantic here; no mush, just some survival bonding. Fortunately, in a fast ascencding climax scientist Neville discovers that one of his experimental vaccines is working on a sedated CGI female. Unfortunately this discovery comes at a time when the zombies are breaking into his lab. Neville gives up his life along with the infected ones so that Anna can escape and deliver the vaccine to those survivors up north. Neville’s sacrifice and discovery, however, do not quite emotionally succeed in giving him the legend movie title. There’s probably no one left that knows of him in the first place.

It used to be that pre-CGI directors, in order to give their scenes a little twist would slosh and roll the camera. The result was that you became very aware of the camera—and hence all the things behind it, including the cameramen and director. You became too conscious that this was just a movie after all by the techniques used to shoot it. To an extent these tricks are still done today. There is the very effective and deliberate jittery camera work so apparent in 28 Weeks later—and there it worked superbly. Too much elaborate CGI work can produce the same effect. There’s a scene where Will is wounded in the leg from an accident as he makes his way back to his vehicle. As he does so he and Sam are attacked by CGI dogs, also suffering from the virus, so they look less like dogs than giant hairless rats with the teeth of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. They have that cartoonish, though ferocious, superimposition look about them, sort as if they had stumbled out of a Jeckel and Hyde version of Scooby Doo. I realize computer rendered scenes are integral in movies today, and many digital images are very effective by blending in seamlessly (the new King Kong was a masterpiece digital imagery for the most part) but I look forward to when prominent displays of digitalization will rival those images of Ray Harryhausen’s famous stop-motion effects. My favorite? The skeleton battle in the Seventh Voyage of Sindbad.

Evolution revised

This could throw a monkey wrench into Darwin: it looks like monkeys may have descended from humans (not the other way round); that would a least help explain the disquieting intelligence gap exemplified below. Yeah it’s depressing (remember that scene in Planet of the Apes where Charleton Heston is kept in a cage by apes?). I guess this evolution video has it all wrong.

Battle of the Christmas Cross political ads

Whose Cross ad will grab the most votes–Huck’s, John’s or Hill’s? (Note: these images are captures from the candidates’ videos)

(Note: By the way, in case you can’t make it out in the Hill ad that writing on the “parchment” above Christ’s head says Vote for Hillary in ’08.)

This is the Zeitigeist speaking

Rush Limbaugh’s now oft quoted remark about Hillary’s unflattering “old hag” photo, “Will Americans want to watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?” has gotten plenty of play in the comment arena. Many have taken offense, or at least feigned offense. Even Bill O’Reilly called it mean-spirited. If you read the entire transcript (at the link above), however, you will realize Limbaugh is merely stating an obvious POV of society, merely paraphrasing the zeitgeist when he notes that women are held to a different standard than men, especially in the aging department. Look (as Rush does) at the plight of aging actresses. Even young actresses are getting plastic surgery to keep those teenage looks. Maureen Dowd, in her Rush to judgement (by the way, the Rush of the title is Rush Limbaugh) opinion piece in the NY Times, admits as much. “Yet it’s true,” she writes, “that looks matter in politics…It is also true that perfecting the outer shell has become an obsession in this country. We’re a nation of Frankensteins and the monster is us. Jennifer Love Hewitt was on the cover of People last week and ended up defending her less svelte pictures with her new fiancé in Hawaii, writing on her Web site: ‘A size 2 is not fat!’ Women are still scrutinized more critically on their looks, which seem to fluctuate more on camera, depending on lighting, bloating and wardrobe…”

DC’s prohibition years–the good ‘ol days

It must’ve been hell for Washington’s politicians back in prohibition. Not only was the dump built atop the morass of a swamp but…well, read what H.L. Mencken described back then: “Nowhere in America…is the swinishness of prohibition more apparent, Washington has become an eighth-rate country town, hoggish and hypocritical. One is nauseated by the atmosphere. It is as if one were sent back to school again, and caned for shooting spit-balls…The man who cherishes his self-respect sends for a time-table and packs his valise. It is not a place to linger in, but to get out of.” (Mencken’s America) Bringing back prohibition at least in Washington might be a good idea; it’s the only way I can think of to get these bums out of there, especially the likes of Ted Kennedy.

Isn’t that Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg (aka Tom Cruise) in the back?

Some of the cast of Tom Cruise’s upcoming movie about the attempted assassination of Hitler. Cruise of course plays von Stauffenberg (you can easily tell by the patch over his eye).

In a sense of course Stauffenberg was a hero–trying to kill a diabolical dictator–but keep in mind that Stauffenberg had supported Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933. It seems his falling out had nothing to do with the grotesque “racial purity” program of the Nazis or of Hitler’s dictatorship, but the fact that the war was going badly. Not only did Hitler survive this assassination attempt of course but he actually turned it into his own personal pleasure (reminiscent of Saddam Hussein): ” Most [of the conspirators] were hanged from meat hooks, their death agonies filmed for the private pleasure of Hitler.” Read more about what would have happened if the conspirators had succeeded.

I would hate to see any enterprise like this fail, especially one that depicts the attempted assassination of such a monster as Hitler but somehow I get the impression that somewhere in the movie Col. Klink from Hogan’s Heroes is going to make an appearance.

Here are some previous posts: here, here, here,.

The “Great Wall” of China (“Great Wall, I laugh at you…I laugh in your face”)

Did anyone know that The Great Wall of China is one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated upon man. Oh, there is in fact a wall all right, and a long one at that, and one that spans centuries, stemming from the 5th century BC up through its most ambitious rendering at the time of Emperor Qin Shi Huang (approximately 220-200 BC) . It still sits there today, at least to some extent. The fraud I’m talking about is the notion of it being one of the wonders of the world. It is clearly not.

In order to understand the true nature of the wall, to see past its famous elongated form, about 1500 to 4000 miles (supposedly you can see it from very low space orbit if atmospheric conditions are just right), you must view it in terms of a single section, since it is merely the same repeated sectioning that characterizes “the great wall”(and has given it its wonder of the world billing. That’s all it is, an enormous labor intensive repetition of one section of rocks and mud, wood and bones from untold numbers of workers (many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, were entombed in the wall over the centuries). Was any real thought even needed in building the wall, except perhaps for some logistics of moving material and acquiring manpower? At least in building the pyramids the Egyptians used some math. The “great wall,” on the other hand,  has all the complexity of a child’s tree fort. The “great wall” certainly lacks any astounding building or design prowess, there is nothing in it or about it that inspires awe (that is if you can get past the length thing). It does not consist of any technologically advanced materials. It’s biggest improvement came during the Ming Dynasty, when brick and lime were used. Compare the “great wall” to a European Cathedral and, in modern terms, it will be like comparing a potted dirt road to a smooth asphalt interstate.

The wall today is kept up in tourist areas but in many other places it is in severe disrepair, and much of it is crumbling. Look at the Great Wall this way:  it is really no more than a rather poorly made adobe wall with a lot of death attached to it.

As for its military significance against Mongol invaders that too is a sham: “Since the Great Wall was discontinuous, Mongol invaders had no trouble breaching the wall by going around it, so the wall proved unsuccessful and was eventually abandoned. Additionally, a policy of mollification during the subsequent Ch’ing Dynasty that sought to pacify the Mongol leaders through religious conversion also helped to limit the need for the wall…”More here.

Keep in mind that the wall’s length is constantly shortening. Take a look at this report from Wired: Time nips at China’s Great Wall: “The Great Wall of China is the symbol of a nation, a wonder of the world and a tourist cash cow that generates millions of dollars a year. It’s also vanishing.” Here’s an article from MSNBC on the same theme: Sandstorms eating away at China’s Great Wall

Presenting…the glorious, the magnificent–The Great Wall of China

Will all the world’s content fit in an iPod by 2020?

It will probably be the case, says Google’s Sukhinder Singh Cassidy. “…if this trend continues, and the cost of storage continues to decrease, we estimate that somewhere around 2020, all the world’s content will fit inside an iPod, and all the world’s music would sit in your palm as early as 2015…” Can you imagine the bill you’d get from iTunes for all that stuff? I have a feeling it’s going to be way out of my league.

Bush the dictator? Not quite.

Back sometime in December of 2000 President Bush received a lot of disdain when he flippantly pronounced, “If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just as long as I’m the dictator. “OK, he was joking here (at least I think he was) but the left being what it is put it in serious context. For them Bush was just about three quarters of a degree from being Dictator Supremo–Julius Caesar with ten-gallon cowboy hat. Because of the Iraq war and aspects of the Patriot Act this view of “Bush the Dictator” is probably more prevalent today than it was when it was first said. It means one thing: people–at least glib leftists– simply do not know what a real dictator is. Take the dictator of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov. This is a real dictator and this is what a real dictator can do and in fact has done:

1 Renamed the month of January after himself, the month of April after his mother.

2 Banned ballet, opera and the circus.

3 Had his photo printed on every bank note.

4 Has his image displayed on the upper right corner of the TV screen during every TV broadcast.

5 Ordered his face appear on all vodka bottles.

6 Banned lip syncing and forbade the playing of recorded music on TV or at weddings.

7 Ordered doctors to cease taking the Hippocratic Oath and instead take an oath to him.

As uninspired a president as Bush might be, so far, at least to my knowledge, he has not yet even tried to ban lip syncing. In fact the only thing I can see that Bush has in common with the dictator Saparmurat Niyazov is his speaking affliction. We all know what a Bushism is. Well, here’s a couple of Niyazov’s Bushisms: “There are not any opposition parties [in Turkmenistan] so how can we grant them freedom? and “The silence that arises from the tongue of centuries rings in my ears.” I can just hear Bush saying something muddling like that.

Now here’s another thing you can do if you’re a real dictator, like, for example, Francisco Macias Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, who gathered a hundred and fifty suspected political opponents in a sports stadium and “ordered them killed in a mass execution while loudspeakers played the Mary Hopkins song “Those were the Days, My Friend.” Fortunately Nguema has since been supplanted by another dictator, nephew Teodoro Obiang who, though not quite as brutal as his uncle, has nevertheless gained notoriety by ordering his security forces to urinate on prisoners, slice off their ears and cover them with stinging ants; on the cultural side he has started his own rap music company–TNO Entertainment.

Source: Tyrants–The World’s 20 Worst Living Dictators by David Wallechinsky (note: ironically in this book the author has an end chapter labeled A Special Case: George W Bush, in which he explains that Bush, in fact, though he’s trying hard, is not really a dictator).

Come on, take a cold shower, Bob

84 year old game show host Bob Barker looks like he ate a bowlful of Viagra instead of his usual Raisin Bran this morning. Geees, Bob, for godsakes, come on, you’re drooling all over your new tux (you know, the one the nurses at the home bought for your, a..er… final gig at that big game show in the sky).

Liquid Christianity?

Yeap, it looks like this is what it’s come to. Well at least the price is right; it’s under two bucks a bottle. For a special spiritual bang you can mix it with Tang. Oh, and ladies, an added benefit: mix this with your favorite herbal shampoo and you’ll get Heavenly hair (then any man will be yours).

Spiritual Water, giving new meaning to washing away your sins.

***Special offer***Drink this while watching the 700 Club and you’ll add ten years to your life–but hurry, this exclusive offer ends at midnight on Dec 31st.

All that glitters (ain’t necessarily all gold)

Yes, for the lifestyles of the rich and famous there is now this–24 karat glitter pills you ingest to make your…a…er–crap glitter . Read about it here. I can just see Paris Hilton and Britney Spears popping these like candy at parties (and hopefully we’ll get to see some great close-up shots from the paparazzi). And remember, if you have to ask the price you can’t afford one.

OH, I just had a cool idea. For your next wild party put a big sandbox in the middle of the room and have all your guests pop a couple of these pills and see who produces the most glitter.

The joy of religious fanaticism

An Islamic Canadian man will be “formally charged on Tuesday with murder in connection with the death of his 16-year-old daughter. The girl, Aqsa Parvez, was in critical condition on Monday after being strangled, apparently after a dispute with her family over her refusal to wear the hijab, the Islamic headscarf worn by some Muslim women.” The girl’s brother has also been indicted. She has since died. Read story here and here. By the way, with increased Islamic immigration this sort of thing is becoming widespread in Western countries.

“It’s almost unbelievable,” writes Little Green Footballs, “but the ultra-left Toronto Star is actually trying to whitewash this story”– Hijab family tensions.

Speaking of joy here’s a another joyful account, but this one involves a revirgined bride: “When Aisha Salim marries her fiance in Pakistan next March, it will be the wedding of her dreams. Wearing a veil and gown, she will be every inch the fairytale virgin bride and as befits her strict Muslim religion, after the ceremony, she will hand her blooded wedding-night sheets to her in-laws as proof of her virginity. But far from being the traditional untouched bride that many Muslim families demand, she is a modern-day university graduate who has smoked, drunk, made love to – and even lived with – a previous English boyfriend. To disguise the fact that she has had sex, she has paid for painful surgery to ‘restore’ her virginity.” Read this story here. Unlike the story above at least this young woman is alive.

Iran: death to women without head scarves.

“Sheik’d, rattled and rolled”

“It was meant to be a simple catch-up with a friend on a warm summer’s night. So when New York native Silvano Orsi stopped by the posh Swiss hotel La Reserve in Geneva on Aug. 19, 2003, he had no idea his life was about to change. Moments later, a man [Sheik Falah bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan - son of former UAE president and brother of the current ruler] allegedly attacked Orsi, smashing his glasses, licking his face and neck, groping his genitals and throwing him to the ground before repeatedly whipping his face, neck and hands with the buckle of his belt in front of the restaurant’s shocked diners and staff. Within hours, he would crawl from the hotel, assaulted and beaten to a pulp by the brother of …one of the richest men in the world…Today the 39-year-old is disabled, unable to work, suffering post-traumatic stress disorder…” Read the rest of this article in the NY Post.

Is murder becoming a victimless crime?

On the Virginia Tech murderer: “I don’t think anything less of him because I know that Robby would have never done anything like this just for the fun of it…He wanted to go out in style, and that’s what he did…”More proof that tolerance for murder is becoming a trend comes from the story of two Penn State students who dressed as Virginia Tech shooting victims at a Halloween party. Not even a year has passed since Seung-Hui Cho murdered 32 people in the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, yet one of the Penn State students was disgusted that a Virginia Tech student created a Facebook group called “People Against This Costume” in response to the tasteless choice of attire. This is a group of college students who now think it’s trendy to be upset about their friends being killed…The thing is, everybody’s making a big stink about Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech was 32 deaths out of the 26 thousand that happen in America everyday. That’s the problem with college students. They all live in an ivory tower of privilege. ” Read article at Pajamas Media.

(By the way, as a quick historical aside, many people think the VT and Columbine murders were the worst school killings in our history; not so. Back in the late twenties there was the Bath, Kansas schoolhouse horror; the death toll was that of VT and Columbine combined.)

Down side of holding a job: co-workers

There’s a list of worker types at Broo Waha (“Too legit to quit, but I wish you would”) This is number three: “(3) The Oversexed Nympho: My god! Just looking at you could send someone’s hormones into such a frenzy that they would have to fight off the urge to hump the nearest inanimate object. Your suggestive remarks and constant butt-slapping wouldn’t bother me as much if the President of the company wasn’t standing right behind us. That skirt you wore last week? I am pretty sure I could see your ovaries it was so short.”

“Libel tourism”

“Britain’s libel laws have given rise to the phenomenon of wealthy “libel tourists,” who sue on the slimmest British connection [e.g., the fact that a book may be available through Amazon.co.uk] in order to ensure a favorable ruling. Mr. bin Mahfouz had the good fortune of having his case of libel against a author and publisher heard by Judge David Eady, who has a long history of strange rulings in libel cases — rulings that generally ran in favor of censorship and against free speech. In connection with another of these rulings in May 2007, British journalist Stephen Glover wrote: ‘Mr Justice Eady is beginning to worry me. Is he a friend of a free Press? There are good reasons to believe that he isn’t.’ ” Read rest of article. (You might want to take a look at this article too.)

Age of the flying bus

It doesn’t seem all that long ago that flying on a plane was about seventy five degrees in quality above taking a bus. That even went for economy class. Not to mention that it was a little faster. Than, and I can’t pinpoint this, something went terribly wrong. Somehow the people at bus terminals started getting on the planes. It got really creepy pretty fast. Instead of finding yourself sitting next to a respectfully behaved civilized person that smelled half-way decent (drifts of Old Spice or Chanel) you got members of the Charles Manson family that smelled like maggot cheese. You got celebrities who behaved like chimps on acid. You got “business” travelers who looked like the floor of the men’s bathroom stall back at the airport. When I was seventeen or eighteen for a time I delivered custom vans to car dealers in various states. I always took the bus back to save money. There you met the scrounges of society, freaks so freaky you wondered if they’d take off their stinking underwear at any moment ( if they were wearing any) and put it over their head and start barking like a dog. Or if that flatulent little old lady in the back seat, the one that’s been sounding for the past two hundred fifty miles like the throbbing souped-up muffler on a Dodge Challenger, would suddenly pounce up and start stripping down to her grossly wrinkled birthday suit (complete with dripping feces). Well, the barking undie heads and loud smelly strippers are doing the flying routine now. Beady-eyed sickos on wings. Take yesterday for an example, where a Ryan Air flight “was stopped just before take-off and taxied back to the terminal when a passenger stood up and urinated at the back of the plane…” Hey, for chrissakes at least have the decency to do it in your pants so we don’t have to see your flabby little dong. This is common crap that goes on every day. For every story you hear of a guy flinging his dong around arcing yellow liquid, there’s probably dozens more that are covered up, never even reported by fellow passengers. No wonder the Captain and co-pilot keep their cabin door locked and chained and password protected. What’s the next level of flight degeneration going to be–where the flight crew starts pissing on the floor? Yeah, maybe the bus drivers will start flying the jets…stay tuned.

Here’s an earlier post on the subject.

December 7, 1941 Day of–Deceit “that will live in infamy”

Debate over whether or not Franklin D Roosevelt knew of the impending attack on Pearl Harbor is not new. In fact, it was soon after the carnage began that speculation started about what President Roosevelt knew–and when he knew it.

Several years ago the debate reached a feverish pitch with the publication of Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor by Robert Stinnett. The book took up seventeen years of research and Freedom of Information Act disclosures. Though there have been methodical attempts to “debunk” the book, it never has in fact been debunked. Ater having read it twice I cast my lot in with military reviewer/writer Gregory McNamee’s assessment, “…American governmental documents that offer apparently incontrovertible proof that Roosevelt knowingly sacrificed American lives in order to enter the war….”

Ironically, Robert Stinnett sympathizes with Roosevelt’s decision, but that doesn’t affect his hard reporting. Back in 1999 Publishers Weekly wrote:

Stinnett [the author] convincingly demonstrates that the U.S. top brass in Hawaii–Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Husband Kimmel and Lt. Gen. Walter Short–were kept out of the intelligence loop on orders from Washington and were then scapegoated for allegedly failing to anticipate the Japanese attack (in May 1999, the U.S. Senate cleared their names). Kimmel moved his fleet into the North Pacific, actively searching for the suspected Japanese staging area, but naval headquarters ordered him to turn back. Stinnett’s meticulously researched book raises deeply troubling ethical issues. While he believes the deceit built into FDR’s strategy was heinous, he nevertheless writes: “I sympathize with the agonizing dilemma faced by President Roosevelt. He was forced to find circuitous means to persuade an isolationist America to join in a fight for freedom.” This, however, is an expression of understanding, not of absolution. If Stinnett is right, FDR has a lot to answer for–namely, the lives of those Americans who perished at Pearl Harbor. Stinnett establishes almost beyond question that the U.S. Navy could have at least anticipated the attack. The evidence that FDR himself deliberately provoked the attack is circumstantial, but convincing enough to make Stinnett’s bombshell of a book the subject of impassioned debate in the months to come. You can read the rest of this review on Amazon (at the book link).

The book has also gotten excellent reviews when it appeared from The Wall street Journal and the NY Times.

Here’s a telling and creepy excerpt from the first chapter:

“Edward R Murrow couldn’t sleep…He…had just returned from a midnight meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House…During their twenty-five minute discussion…the President provided Murrow with something…that any reporter would kill for. That night he [Murrow] told his wife, ‘It’s the biggest story of my life, but I don’t know whether it’s my duty to tell it or forget it.’ Long after the war ended, Murrow was asked about this meeting by author-journalist John Gunther. After a long pause, Murrow replied: ‘That story would send Casey Murrow [his son] through college, and if you think I’m going to give it to you, you’re out of your mind.” As this chapter continues the meeting is given much more context. It’s the kind of thing that raises goose-bumps on the back of your neck. We’ll probably never find out what was said to Murrow. He took the secret to his grave.

You might want to read this article too (it was published last year in the Gazette): 65 years later, his questions linger. Several days before Pearl Harbor was attacked…”Fenton scrambled to the deck and saw two dozen ships of unknown origin [they were Japanese] about 3 miles away on the horizon, heading east. They were silhouetted by moonlight that would have blinded the fleet to the Boise’s presence. Greatly outnumbered and under orders to maintain radio silence, the Boise did not fire and did not alert anyone for days to what it had seen. When the Boise reached Manila, officers alerted members of Gen. Douglas Mac-Arthur’s staff of their find, Fenton said. Their reaction, as he recalled, was: “They’ve got as much right to be in the water as we do.” It was only when word came down Dec. 7 about the Pearl Harbor attack that Fenton and his shipmates realized they had seen the fleet that brought America into World War II. While the Boise hid by a remote Pacific island after the attack and awaited orders, talk buzzed about what its crew could have done…”

Note: Also check this previous post.

Newsweek asks, Is Photography Dead?

Of course it doesn’t seem at all possible, what with the plethora of cameras out there, and the resultant pics poured daily into the black hole gigs of the web (like Flickr for one). Well, here’s some context from the article: “…Yet wandering the galleries of these two shows, you can’t help but wonder if the entire medium hasn’t fractured itself beyond all recognition. Sculpture did the same thing a while back, so that now “sculpture” can indicate a hole in the ground as readily as a bronze statue. Digitalization has made much of art photography’s vast variety possible. But it’s also a major reason that, 25 years after the technology exploded what photography could do and be, the medium seems to have lost its soul…” Read more.

You might want to check this NY Times article link too, about staged photography in the early days (which would seem to fly in the face of the article above); it’s in three parts, with illustrations. There’s an article here too about a similar suject.

The Prime Directive of multiculturalism

Now of course you, being of at least fair and sophisticated intelligence, knew this was going to transpire sooner or later. Well, it must be later now because multiculturalists in the anthropology field are now lifting female genital mutilation to the plane of cultural norm. Evidently they have borrowed Star Trek’s Prime Directive, an official order of Star Fleet Command directing that Earth (…er…i.e., The West) will refrain from imposing–well, let the official statement  be referred to below:

…the Prime Directive, Starfleet’s General Order #1, is the most prominent guiding principle of the United Federation of Planets. The Prime Directive dictates that there can be no interference with the internal affairs of other civilizations, consistent with the real world concept of Westphalian sovereignty. It has special implications, however, for civilizations still at a ‘pre-warp’ stage of development, since no primitive culture can be given or exposed to any information regarding advanced technology or the existence of extraplanetary civilizations, lest this exposure alter the natural development of the civilization. In addition to exposure, purposeful efforts to improve or change in any way the natural course of such a society, even if that change is well-intentioned and kept completely secret, are prohibited.  There you have it. Read all about the prime directive.

More Japanese culture

“…good fortune comes from a woman with bloated genitals wearing a red loincloth, making love in the treasure boat position and sprinkled with gold leaf…” Oh God yes that’s sounds sublime. Read more.

Neglected Japanese history

Japan’s oldest known book on the subject of sexual matters, the “Ishinbou Bonaihen” published in 984 AD, contains the first historical reference to the shrub that shields the adult female pubis. “Her bush was luxuriant and quite rough,” it soberly noted. Over the eons, reports historian Koshi Shimokawa in Asahi Geino (11/22), hair down there has been referred using such terms as “inmo” (hidden hair), “sosoge” and “chijiregami” (short, curly ones). Now in Japan, spoken and printed references to the female bush generally apply the inelegant English borrowing “hea” (hair) — which may have been initially inspired by the eponymous 1969 Broadway musical, which at its climax featured the entire cast flaunting their full frontal fuzz. Of course, the downside of unkempt shrubbery has also been known for over a millennium: in 1185, toward the end of the Heian Era, a medical text titled “Byoso-shi” noted that public fur served as a snug haven for body lice. Read more Japanese history at the notorious Waiwai.

Also see a previous post here.